Recession Probabilities for Washington State

This page presents recession probabilities for the state of Washington obtained from a markov-switching model applied to the Washington coincident index of economic activity produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (http://www.phil.frb.org/econ/stateindexes/index.html). Note that this coincident index is tilted heavily toward labor market variables and the recession probabilities reported here are thus best thought of as probabilities of labor market recessions. For further details on the construction of this coincident index, see:

Crone, T.M. and A. Clayton-Matthews, (2005), “Consistent Economic Indexes for the 50 States,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 87(4), pp. 593-603.

For details on the markov-switching model used to construct the probabilities, see:

Owyang, M.T., Piger, J.M. and Howard J. Wall, (2005), "Business Cycle Phases in U.S. States," Review of Economics and Statistics, 87(4), pp. 604-16.

Recession probabilities are updated each time the Philadelphia Fed coincident indices are updated.

Recent Recession Probabilities for Washington State

Month	Probability of Recession
May 2009	100.0%
June 2009	100.0%
July 2009	99.9%
August 2009	99.8%
September 2009	99.7%
October 2009	98.7%

A Graph Showing Historical Recession Probabilities for Washington State

An Excel spreadsheet containing Historical Recession Probabilities for Washington State