The WEI is an index of real economic activity using timely and relevant high-frequency data. It represents the common component of ten different daily and weekly series covering consumer behavior, the labor market, and production. The WEI is scaled to the four-quarter GDP growth rate; for example, if the WEI reads -2 percent and the current level of the WEI persists for an entire quarter, one would expect, on average, GDP that quarter to be 2 percent lower than a year previously.

• Redbook Research: Same Store, Retail Sales Average, Y/Y % Change
• Rasmussen Consumer Index
• Unemployment Insurance: Initial Claims
• Insured Unemployment (Continued Claims)
• American Staffing Association Staffing Index
• Federal Withholding Tax Collections
• Raw Steel Production
• US Fuel Sales to End Users
• U.S Railroad Traffic
• Electric Utility Output

Lewis, Daniel J., Mertens, Karel and Stock, James H., Weekly Economic Index (Lewis-Mertens-Stock) [WEI], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WEI, September 22, 2020.