Grand Rapids Pundit’s Michigan Economy Tracker index has been updated. The state’s sales tax revenue level dropped 0.4% from July of last year. This is particularly bad, because the Michigan Economy Tracker tells us year over year growth. The problem is that July 2009 was the bottom of 2009′s sales tax revenue decline. Although the index is still at a positive value for 2010, remember that it measures a three month trailing average. The actual raw number of July of 2010 is -0.4%, meaning that sales tax revenue in July of 2010 is 0.4% below the already dramatic drop in July 2009. In other words, we’re worse off than we were last year at this time.

Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse.

This is borne out by another index that I watch closely – the Consumer Indexes Daily Growth Index. It shows the year over year decline in consumer spending dropping to -5.3%. This is real-time data, not like the government’s GDP numbers which have a lag of 30-90 days.

Looks like we’re in for a rough winter.