Timely Economic Indicators: First Report August 2020 – Commentary

The current public health crisis has resulted in an unprecedented collapse in economic activity. Policymakers and stakeholders face important data gaps due to the inherent lag between economic activity and the publication of official statistics. To assess economic activity closer to real-time, the Western Development Commission (WDC) has compiled a set of timely economic indicators in an attempt to bridge this gap. The timely economic indicators set is comprised of officially released public statistics that are published at least quarterly. The WDC acknowledges that this indicator set is limited given the lack of detailed and frequently published official economic data at the county level. To address this limitation the WDC will supplement the regular indicators report with a series of ad-hoc reports based on less conventional data sources and infrequently published statistics.