There are some questions about what those quarterly GDP declines really mean, given that job growth has continued at a healthy pace and GDP would have risen in the first quarter if it hadn’t been for a big increase in imports that may have reflected U.S. economic strength more than weakness. But it seems pretty obvious why we pay attention to quarterly GDP changes. In retrospect, annual GDP change gives a smoother, clearer view of the medium-term trajectory of the economy, but at turns in the business cycle that view is usually out-of-date. (The chart stops short of 2020 for the reason mentioned above.)

To some extent all of the economic indicators discussed here are out-of-date, of course. The CPI is among the timeliest, but the numbers released this week are supposed to represent average prices over the entire month of June. There’s been much pointing in recent weeks to signs that inflationary pressures are receding—gasoline prices, among the biggest inflation drivers so far this year, are down 8% since mid-June. Maybe this will have an impact on the next CPI report. If it does, though, the place to look will be in the monthly changes and not the annual ones.

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. A former editorial director of Harvard Business Review, he has written for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is author of The Myth of the Rational Market.

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