Today the Conference Board released its March report on the Commerce Department's composite indexes of coincident and lagging economic indicators.

During March the Composite Index of Coincident Economic Indicators (CEI) increased by 0.1 percent. Today's report contained March data for three of the four component indicators -- employees on nonagricultural payrolls, personal income less transfer payments, and industrial production. The latest available data on manufacturing and trade sales was from February. With the exception of industrial production, all of the latest reported values were up. Industrial production was dragged down in March by the General Motors strike. Based on revised data, the coincident index increased 0.8 percent in February and decreased 0.3 percent in January. Before that, the most-recent downtick in the coincident composite was a 0.1 percent drop last July. Since then, the index has risen steadily from 117.4 to the current level of 119.6.

The Composite Index of Lagging Economic Indicators also increased 0.1 percent in March. Seven component indicators make up the lagging index. During March, three of these rose, three were unchanged, and one was unavailable. Based on revised data, the lagging index decreased 0.6 percent in February and increased 0.3 percent in January. The large drop in February is dragging this indicator down. The March reading of 102.2 is the second lowest in the past ten months. This should not be any cause for concern as long as the coincident index continues to advance.

For the past couple months, the release of the coincident and lagging index reports has lagged the release of the leading index report. This was due to delays in the Federal government's publication of data on some of the component indicators. In today's report, the Conference Board stated that it expected that all of the data would be available on time for the next release so that all three composite indexes would be available at the same time on Monday, June 3.

Transmitted: 5/8/96

Byline: Lafferty (MF Merlin)