Last updated: March 2008

New England Economic Indicators presents a monthly snapshot of the New England economy, featuring data on labor market conditions, income, consumer prices, real estate, exports, electricity sales, state revenues, and economic activity. Monthly or quarterly data available at regional, state, and metropolitan levels are published in Indicators, and most data can be obtained free of charge from the web sites of source agencies (as well as the Indicators web site). The following is a description of the methodologies and data sources used to compile Indicators each month.

Labor Market Conditions

Employment
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/ces/home.htm
http://www.bls.gov/sae/home.htm

Nonagricultural Employment represents the number of full-time and part-time wage and salary workers on the payrolls of nonagricultural establishments. Nonagricultural employment includes temporary workers but excludes proprietors, the self-employed, unpaid volunteer or family workers, farm workers, domestic workers in households, military personnel, and employees of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and state employment security agencies collect the data from a sample of establishments for the payroll period that includes the 12th day of every month.

Employment by Industry
For data reporting purposes, BLS aggregates North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) sectors into a set of 11 groupings called “supersectors.” The availability of seasonally adjusted (SA) data for the New England states varies by state and by supersector. For example, complete SA data for all six New England states are not available for two supersectors Information and Natural Resources and Mining). The Indicators database contains all SA and non-SA supersector-level data available for the New England states.

BLS releases national employment data in the monthly economic news release, The Employment Situation, usually available on the first Friday of each month. Roughly two weeks later, regional and state-level data appear in the Regional and State Employment and Unemployment news release. Approximately one to two weeks after that, metropolitan area employment data (not seasonally adjusted) appear in the Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment release. Current and archived news releases are available on BLS’s web site, http://www.bls.gov/bls/newsrels.htm. Additional information and more detailed definitions can be found in the BLS Handbook of Methods, available online at http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/home.htm.

Employment for New England City and Town Areas (NECTAs)
BLS publishes non-SA employment data for 18 metropolitan New England City and Town Areas (NECTAs) and 7 divisions of the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy NECTA. Prior to 2005, data were published for New England metropolitan areas; these were subsequently redefined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 2003. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston seasonally adjusts the entire series of these data using the Census Bureau’s X-11 ARIMA method.

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Labor Force and Unemployment
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/cps/home.htm
http://www.bls.gov/lau/home.htm

The Civilian Labor Force includes all persons 16 years of age and older who are employed or are available for employment, except armed services personnel. Unlike employment figures, which are based on establishment surveys that count the number of jobs on establishment payrolls, labor force figures are based on household surveys and reflect the number of individuals who have jobs or are looking for work. These two series diverge because some individuals in the labor force have more than one job (counted once in the labor force but more than once in payroll employment), are self-employed (counted in the labor force but not in payroll employment), commute across state lines to work (counted in the workplace state’s payroll employment but in the residence state’s labor force), or are unemployed (counted in the labor force but not in payroll employment).

The Number Unemployed figure reports civilians who had no employment during the survey week, but were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment some time during the prior four weeks. Persons are classified as unemployed if they are waiting to be recalled to a job from which they were laid off or are waiting to report to a new job within 30 days.

The Unemployment Rate represents the number of unemployed persons as a percentage of the civilian labor force. U.S. labor force and unemployment data are gathered for BLS by the Census Bureau in its monthly Current Population Survey, a sample of U.S. households designed to represent the civilian noninstitutional population, and are published in the monthly news release The Employment Situation. Labor force and unemployment data for Census regions, divisions, states, and metropolitan areas (including NECTAs) are estimated using a time series modeling approach by state employment security agencies under a federal-state cooperative program. Regional and state unemployment data appear in the monthly news release, Regional and State Employment and Unemployment, while data for 21 NECTAs and 9 NECTA divisions appear in Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston seasonally adjusts NECTA-level unemployment data using the X-11 ARIMA method.

When calendar year data are complete each year, unemployment estimates for state and metro areas (including NECTAs) are revised by BLS and state employment security agencies. Revised data are generally released each March.

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Average Weekly Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance
The Conference Board, Inc.
http://www.conference-board.org
U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov

Average Weekly Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance includes any notice of unemployment filed either to request a determination of entitlement to and eligibility for compensation, or to begin a second or subsequent period of eligibility within a benefit year or period of eligibility. Data for each month represent averages over the partial and full calendar weeks in the month. The U.S. average weekly initial claims figure is Business Cycle Indicator Series 5, a component (measured inversely) of the Conference Board’s U.S. Index of Leading Economic Indicators. The Conference Board, Inc., calculates and seasonally adjusts the U.S. average for each month from weekly reports gathered by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration from employment security agencies of the 50 states. By applying this same technique to state weekly initial claims data, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston calculates and seasonally adjusts monthly averages for the New England states.

Weekly initial claims data for all states are published by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration.

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Manufacturing Workers’ Hours and Earnings
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/ces/home.htm
http://www.bls.gov/sae/home.htm

Average Weekly Hours and Average Hourly Earnings of Manufacturing Production Workers are derived from the establishment payroll reports identified under Nonagricultural Employment. Average weekly hours is derived from total hours, which includes all hours worked during the pay period and reflects factors such as unpaid absenteeism, labor turnover, part-time work, and strikes, as well as fluctuations in work schedules. Hours and earnings data are released simultaneously with employment data. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston estimates hours and earnings figures for New England as a whole by applying weights based on state-level manufacturing employment to state-level hours and earnings data.

Hourly earnings are on a “gross” basis and reflect not only basic hourly and incentive wage rates, but also premium pay for overtime and lateshift work. As averages, the earnings figures reflect shifts in the number of employees between relatively high-paid and relatively low-paid work and changes in workers’ earnings in individual establishments.

The hours and earnings data, like nonagricultural employment data, undergo benchmark revisions each year.With the conversion to NAICS, hours and earnings data were curtailed to a starting point of January 2001.

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Income
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
http://www.bea.gov

Total Personal Income by Place of Residence is the income from all sources received by individuals, nonprofit institutions, private noninsured welfare funds, and private trust funds.Total personal income is calculated by summing wage and salary disbursements, other labor income, proprietors’ income (with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments), rental income of persons (with capital consumption adjustment), personal dividend income, personal interest income, and transfer payments, less personal contributions for social insurance. Personal income is measured before the deduction of personal income taxes and other personal taxes and is reported in current dollars. The Bureau of Economic Analysis seasonally adjusts and publishes income data in its Survey of Current Business.

Wage and Salary Disbursements by Place of Work, a component of personal income, is defined as the monetary remuneration of employees, including the compensation of corporate officers, commissions, tips, bonuses, and receipts in kind. Disbursements are recorded on a place-of-work basis and are then adjusted to a place-of-residence basis for the data series Personal Income by Place of Residence. This is done so that the income of the recipients whose place of residence differs from their place of work will be correctly assigned to the appropriate state of residence. Additional definitions related to personal income are available in the BEA’s online glossary of regional economic accounts terms, http://bea.gov/bea/regional/articles/spi2001/glossary.cfm.

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Employer Costs
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/ect/

The Employment Cost Index (ECI), published quarterly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is a measure of changes in employer labor costs. On a national level, BLS publishes an index of Total Compensation as well as indexes for two components of Total Compensation (Wages and Salaries and Benefits) for various private- and public-sector industries. For New England and other regions, however, BLS publishes the indexes for private-sector workers only and does not publish an index for the Benefits component. ECI data are indexed to the fourth quarter of 2005, and data for New England begin in the first quarter of 2006.

The Wages and Salaries component reflects hourly straight-time wage rates, or, for workers not paid on an hourly basis, straight-time earnings divided by the corresponding hours. Straight-time wage and salary rates are total earnings before payroll deductions, including production bonuses, incentive earnings, commission payments, and cost-of-living adjustments. This component does not include premium pay for overtime and for work on weekends and holidays, shift differentials, and non-production bonuses (e.g., lump-sum payments provided in lieu of wage increases).

The Benefits component includes paid leave (e.g., vacations, holidays, sick and other leave), supplemental and premium pay for work beyond the regular schedule (e.g., overtime and work on weekends or holidays), shift differentials, and nonproduction bonuses (e.g., referral and attendance bonuses). This component also includes insurance benefits (life, health, short-term disability, and long-term disability), retirement and savings benefits (defined benefit and defined contribution plans), and legally required benefits (Social Security, Medicare, federal and state unemployment insurance, and worker compensation).

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Consumer Prices
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm
http://www.bls.gov/ro1/home.htm#news

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), calculated by BLS, provides a measure of the average change in the prices paid by urban consumers for a fixed market basket of goods and services relative to the price of that basket during the 1982-1984 period. The U.S. index is based on the prices of goods and services, including food and beverages, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education, and communication, that people buy for day-to-day living in urban areas across the country. U.S. data are published in the monthly BLS news release, Consumer Price Index. BLS publishes total Boston CPI data every other month. The geographic sampling unit for the Boston CPI encompasses the Boston-Brockton-Nashua metropolitan area (including parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut), but is not necessarily comparable to the Boston-Cambridge- Quincy NECTA.

Although BLS provides both unadjusted and seasonally adjusted CPI data, only unadjusted data appear in Indicators because BLS recommends that unadjusted data be used to measure escalation in prices.

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Real Estate

Conventional Mortgage Home Price Index
Freddie Mac
http://www.freddiemac.com

The Conventional Mortgage Home Price Index (CMHPI) is a quarterly price measure derived from data on conventional mortgage loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since January 1975. Freddie Mac uses repeat mortgage transactions to identify the sales price of a single-family physical housing property at two or more points in time, and then aggregates and indexes the price changes, using the first quarter of 1975 as a base. Because of the computational methodology of the home price index, updates frequently affect all points in the series history. Further information on the methods used to calculate the CMHPI is available in “Conventional Mortgage Home Price Index,” Journal of Housing Research 6(3):389-418 (1995). The Freddie Mac CMHPI is no longer published in Indicators, but is featured in the Indicators database.

Home Price Index
Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO)
http://www.ofheo.gov/hpi.aspx?Nav=269

The Home Price Index (HPI) of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) represents price changes in single-family houses.  The HPI is a weighted, repeat-sales index that measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings of the same properties. Each time a property "repeats" in the form of a sale or a refinance, the overall average changes. 

The HPI is based on conventional mortgages, which are mortgages purchased or securitized by either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or meeting those agencies’ underwriting guidelines.  Excluded are mortgages that are insured or guaranteed by federal government entities such as the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) or the Veterans Administration (VA).  Mortgages for properties exceeding a loan limit linked to an index published by the Federal Housing Finance Board and mortgages for non single-family properties such as condominiums, cooperatives, multi-unit properties, or planned unit developments, are also excluded from the HPI.

OFHEO publishes the HPI for the United States, Census Divisions, states, and metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) each quarter.  In addition, OFHEO publishes a quarterly index of purchase-only transactions (not including refinancings), but not for MSAs. The HPI is similar to Freddie Mac’s conventional mortgage home price index, but the HPI includes mortgages financed by both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The OFHEO HPI is indexed to the first quarter of 1980 (the first quarter of 1995 for MSAs).

Existing Home Sales and Median Sales Price of Existing Homes
National Association of Realtors
http://www.onerealtorplace.com

Data on Existing-Home Sales and on the Median Sales Price of Existing Single-Family Homes are compiled by the National Association of Realtors. The information is based on monthly reports of existing single-family home sales from boards of Realtors and multiple listing systems. Existing-home sales are seasonally adjusted at an annual rate and represent the volume of homes sold. Median sales prices are not seasonally adjusted and are reported for the United States and for 11 New England metropolitan areas. Changes in the median price reflect changes in the mix of housing sold as well as the appreciation and depreciation of individual home prices.

Housing Permits
U.S. Bureau of Census
http://www.census.gov/const/www/permitsindex.html

Housing Permits Authorized represents the number of new, privately owned housing units— including houses, apartments, or groups of rooms or single rooms intended for occupancy as separate living quarters—authorized by construction permits. Hotels, motels, dormitories, nursing homes, and mobile homes are not included. Single units are defined as detached/semi-detached structures with a ground-to-roof parting wall, separate utilities, and separate entry from the street or common hallway. Data for New England, its six states, and 15 metropolitan areas are based on reports submitted by local building permit officials and are published monthly by the Census Bureau in Current Construction Reports - Housing Units Authorized by Building Permits, Table 2, “U.S., Region, Division, and State.” The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston seasonally adjusts state level data only. National figures are seasonally adjusted by the Census Bureau and are obtained from Current Construction Reports - Housing Units Authorized by Building Permits, Table 1, “U.S. and Four Regions.” The monthly data reported in Indicators do not incorporate revisions made by the Census Bureau which does publish year-to-date and annual permit data that reflect revisions to monthly data, but does not publish revised data for individual months.

Construction Contracts
McGraw-Hill Construction Dodge
http://dodge.construction.com/Analytics/Default.asp

The Value of Total Construction Contracts reports the indexed dollar value of contracts for new construction, additions, and major alterations, but not for maintenance. The Residential Construction series gives the value of contracts for one- and two-family houses, apartment buildings, hotels, motels, and dormitories. Nonresidential Building Construction includes commercial buildings, manufacturing plants, hospitals, schools and colleges, and other public and private buildings. Nonbuilding Construction refers to such projects as highways, bridges, dams, utility systems, and airports.The figures are compiled by McGraw-Hill Construction Dodge and are published in Dodge Construction Potentials Bulletin. Monthly updates to construction contract data incorporate up to three years of revised estimates.The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston indexes all data to 1980 levels and seasonally adjusts only residential data. The information supplied by Dodge is proprietary and is reproduced with permission.

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Merchandise Exports
World Institute for Strategic Economic Research (WISER)
http://www.wisertrade.org

Merchandise Exports is Origin of Movement data reported quarterly by the World Institute for Strategic Economic Research (WISER) based on trade data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Division. The data represent the dollar value of exports by state, three-digit NAICS code, and destination market (country).The Origin of Movement data are based on shippers’ export declarations and reflect the reported point of origin, which may be the state where the commodity begins its export journey, the state of origin of the good with the greatest share of value in a bundle of exports, or the state where the goods are consolidated by an intermediary for shipment overseas. Thus, the data do not always identify the state where the commodities were produced. The export data supplied by WISER are proprietary and are reproduced with permission.

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Electricity Sales
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration
http://www.eia.doe.gov

Electricity Sales tables present estimated sales of electricity to residential, commercial, and industrial customers. Data for the United States, New England, and the six New England states are derived from the Energy Information Administration’s Form EIA-826, “Monthly Electric Utility Sales and Revenue Report with State Distributions.”The data are published in Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.4A, “Retail Sales of Electricity to Ultimate Consumers - Estimated by Sector, by State.” Electricity sales data beginning in January 1986 are not strictly comparable with earlier data.Year-to-year changes in commercial and industrial electricity sales should be viewed with caution, as utilities may reclassify consumers, moving them from the commercial to the industrial sector or the reverse.

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State Revenues

State Revenues data are compiled from monthly revenue reports obtained directly from state agencies. For each of the six New England states, Indicators reports total general fund revenues as well as collections from the two historically largest taxes. Annual totals are for the July through June fiscal years. For example, FY2004 is the sum of collections for the 12 months from July 2003 through June 2004. These revenue data are preliminary estimates generated by each of the New England states, are unaudited, and are often subject to revision. (Such revisions are not necessarily reflected in Indicators.) For information on State Revenues data, please see the Indicators article “Is New England’s Fiscal Crisis Abating?” at http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/neei/articles/index.htm

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Bankruptcies
American Bankruptcy Institute
http://www.abiworld.org/

Total bankruptcies represent the number of business filings (Chapters 7, 11, 12, and 13) plus the number of consumer or personal filings (Chapters 7, 11, and 13). The American Bankruptcy Institute compiles and distributes these data, which are initially released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Economic Activity
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
http://www.philadelphiafed.org/econ/stateindexes/index.html

The Economic Activity Index is the monthly coincident indicator developed for each of the 50 states by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Calibrated to trend at each state’s pace of growth in real gross state product relative to July 1992 levels, the state indexes are derived from total nonfarm employment, unemployment rates, average hours worked in manufacturing, and wage and salary disbursements.

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Sources of Indicators Data

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