More On State Sales Tax Collections

State sales tax collections are a strong indicator of whether a state is going into a recession or not. This is useful information for lenders since loan default rates are known to correlate with recessions. After my last post on this, Calculated Risk has dug up a useful graphic from a Rockefeller Institute report that gives a heat map for year over year sales tax collections changes.

Green is positive change in collections, and blue is a negative change. There's a lot of blue in there. Presumably, lending to green states would have a below-average risk because the economies are still thumping along and any laid-off workers could find new employment, hopefully in time to pay off their loans.