Puerto Rico’s economic activity index extended its decline to a fourth straight month in December.
The December economic activity index value was 0.7% below that for November. The index was up 16.1% from December 2017, when Puerto Rico was still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Maria.
![Puerto Rico economic activity index 2017 to 2018](https://arizent.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2e427f8/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3560x2320+0+0/resize/740x482!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsource-media-brightspot.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2F8c%2Fff%2F6a6836f34bc0a091b3acd65d1438%2Fbb-022519-pr.png)
Compared with December 2016, December’s economic activity index was down 3.1%.
Three of the four components of the economic activity index fell in December from November.
The components that declined from November were non-farm payroll employment (1.1%), electric power generation (0.1%), and gasoline consumption (2.6%). Cement sales, counted by number of 94-pound bags sold, increased by 0.1%.
The Economic Development Bank for Puerto Rico compiles the statistics. It applies a three-month moving average to the gasoline consumption data. In other words, with this data the comparison is between October through December data and September through November data.