Economic Indicators & Data

Leading economic indicators are data that tend to change before the overall economy does, helping forecast future activity.

Lagging indicators are economic data that change after the economy has already begun a trend, confirming its direction.

The yield curve plots interest rates on bonds of the same quality across different maturities, usually government bonds.

The consumer confidence index measures how optimistic households feel about the economy and their finances.

The misery index is the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, used as a rough gauge of economic hardship.

Okun's law is the observed relationship that each extra percentage point of cyclical unemployment is associated with roughly a 2% fall in real GDP below potential.

The producer price index measures the average change over time in the selling prices that domestic producers receive for their output.

Seasonal unemployment is joblessness that recurs at certain times of year because demand for some work rises and falls with the seasons.

Regression to the mean is the statistical tendency for extreme measurements to be followed by ones closer to the average, due to chance.

Simpson's paradox is when a trend that appears in separate subgroups of data reverses or disappears once the groups are combined.