What constitutes Economic Performance here?  States usually measure it by jobs created/lost.  The U.S. Dept. of Commerce just released [prelim estimated] Industry+Public Sector Earnings through 4Q2008, but GDP by Industry at State level won’t be out until June. We depend on your perspectives among others, so your guidance on this will be helpful.

Accurate and timely economic activity measures for regions, states and metro areas is essential for business managhement but is unfortunately had to find.  Employment is the most timely measure.  State and Metro job counts are available with about a five week lag from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Caution: this is cruder data that the job count for the US; the state data does not add up to the US total.  State job counts initially do not fully catch changes in trends.

Also the jobs data does not have information about work hours, wages or other significant income sources such as investment income and self-employment income.  The personal income data contains this but this data lags several months at the regional level.

A good compromise bertween jobs and personal income data is the"economic activity index” from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank which has aboout a seven week lag.It is derived from job, wage and hours data but lacks non-wage income data. Conveniently, it is benchmarked so it readily comparable with familar national GDP data.

For the construction market, this index needs to be supplemented with state data on public budgets which contain information about public construction funds available together with a hint of consumer and business confidence in the state.  Public budget data is summarized quarterly by the Rockefeller Institute of Government ansd rtwice a year by the Association of State budget Officers.

If your market is dominated by one or only a few states, go right to the source data available in more detail from the state Labor Department and state Budget Office.

Additional regional insight is available from state and metro housing permits data from the Census Bureau with about a six week lag. State and Metro home sales data is available (fee) from the National Association of Realtors. Summary state and Metro nonresidential construction starts data is available (fee)with a one week lag from Reed Construction Data.

Coming soon from Reed Construction Data: construction expansion indexes for any region defined as the ratio between the value of projects in the pipeline to the value of projects under construction.