Economic indicators

What Are Economic Indicators?

A: An economic indicator is simply any economic indicators, such as the unemployment rate, GDP, or the inflation rate, which indicate how well the economy is doing and how well the economy is going to do in the future. As shown in the article "How Markets Use Information To Set Prices" investors use all the information at their disposal to make decisions. If a set of economic indicators suggest that the economy is going to do better or worse in the future than they had previously expected, they may decide to change their investing strategy.

Procyclic: A procyclic (or procyclical) economic indicator is one that moves in the same direction as the economy. So if the economy is doing well, this number is usually increasing, whereas if we're in a recession this indicator is decreasing. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is an example of a global economic indicators.

Countercyclic: A countercyclic (or countercyclical) economic indicator is one that moves in the opposite direction as the economy. The unemployment rate gets larger as the economy gets worse so it is a countercyclic economic indicator.

Acyclic: An acyclic economic indicator is one that has no relation to the health of the economy and is generally of little use. The number of home runs the Montreal Expos hit in a year generally has no relationship to the health of the economy, so we could say it is an acyclic economic indicator.

Leading: leading economic indicators are indicators which change before the economy changes. Stock market returns are a leading indicator, as the stock market usually begins to decline before the economy declines and they improve before the economy begins to pull out of a recession. Leading economic indicators are the most important type for investors as they help predict what the economy will be like in the future.

Lagged: A lagged economic indicator is one that does not change direction until a few quarters after the economy does. The unemployment rate is a lagged economic indicator as unemployment tends to increase for 2 or 3 quarters after the economy starts to improve.

Economic Indicators

Provided by NEMA Business Information Services (NEMA/BIS), the Economic Indicators is a monthly review of aggregate economic statistics for various industry sectors. Each monthly update provides figures for the current year, previous quarter, along with comparisons to that quarter in the previous year.

Total housing starts for April fell to a 17-month low annualized rate of 1.85 million units, further demonstrating a softening in the U.S. housing market. On a year-over-year basis, housing starts declined 11.1 percent. In addition, single-family housing starts retreated 5.7 percent when compared to the previous year. Evidence of the temperate housing market can also be seen in data for new home sales. Despite posting month-to-month growth of 4.9 percent over March, the year-over-year sales rate declined 5.7 percent to 1.20 million. As a result, the months-supply of houses for sale in April is 5.8, which is 1.5 months longer when compared to April 2005. See also india economic indicators, japan economic indicators
and uk economic indicators.

Weekly Economic Indicators

Recent economic developments and prospects and the weekly economic bulletin are available in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format PDF format. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website. For alternative ways to read PDF documents and further information on website accessibility visit the HM Treasury accessibility page.

The Pocket databank is a weekly Treasury statistical publication, containing all major indicators and series, for both the domestic and prominent foreign economies. The focus of the Pocket databank is to be a quick easy concise reference and resource showing, both recent monthly and annual, historical data. As well as the Excel '95 version presented here a hard copy can be applied for from: weekly_economic_indicators@hm-treasury.gov.uk

Economic Indicators

This publication is prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers to supply monthly updates related to the economic conditions in the United States. Economic Indicators provides statistical data both in tabular and graphic form and includes information on consumer and producer prices, employment, production, and money and banking. Tables typically display 10 years of annual data with the most recent 12 to 15 months broken out in detail.

Below is a list of all years for which we have available PDF files. After selecting a year, you will be able to view individual issues for that year. Each year also includes an index of all pages, which can be viewed separately or across a span of years.