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FWF Market Insights – September 18, 2020

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

This report serves to help understand the economic trends occurring in the states that are currently open, or are in the process of opening up. All data is pulled from external sources, which are given credit throughout.

WEEKLY ECONOMIC INDEX (WEI)

The Weekly Economic Index (WEI) is a measure taken from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Essentially, this takes data from past quarters, most recently Q4 2019, and compares it to similar data from this quarter on a weekly basis to give an estimation for where GDP currently stands. It is not a precise measurement, but it is known to be fairly accurate. This is an overall measure, and therefore, covers the U.S. as a whole. This can be deemed as a good starting point for looking at the current economic standing.

· Currently, the WEI is sitting around -4.57 percent for the week ending September 12, compared to -3.94 percent for the week prior.

UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS

Taken from the United States Department of Labor, the data below shows the initial unemployment claims from each state. When looking at the week-over-week change. it is evident that less than half of the states are seeing a rise in claims whereas more than half are seeing a decline. The big outliers one can see are California and Texas, which each had a week-over-week change of over 12,000 fewer claims than the week prior.

**This data is from the United States Department of Labor**

**This data is from the United States Department of Labor**

COVID-19 DATA

The following data has been taken from Reuters and represents the current 7-day average of COVID-19 cases currently in the U.S.

Listed below are the statistics, as of the week ending September 12, for states that are re-opening and have 5,000+ confirmed cases within the state. These figures will change as the states continue to open more, meaning next week’s update will most likely show a different picture than the current data.

**This data is taken from Reuters Graphics**

For a visual reference of all states, the graphic below shows new cases per week for every state in the U.S. The orange line represents new cases, and the blue bar in the graph represents a decline in cases for two consecutive weeks. Furthermore, the graphs are laid out where the state is located geographically in the United States.

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