US economy
Twenty-three indicators grouped by the question they answer, each with what it actually measures. Frequencies differ — policy rates update daily, jobless claims weekly, most of the rest monthly with a reporting lag — so every figure is labelled with its own cadence and date.
Growth
Whether the economy is producing more or less than it was.
Output of factories, mines and utilities. One of the oldest and least revised measures of real activity.
How much of industrial capacity is actually in use. Above roughly 80% has historically coincided with inflationary pressure.
Total retail and food service sales. Consumption is about two thirds of US GDP, so this is the broadest monthly read on demand.
The headline measure, inflation-adjusted. Quarterly and heavily revised, so useful for direction rather than precision.
Labour market
How easily people can find work, and how hard employers are looking.
New unemployment filings, reported weekly. The most timely hard labour indicator there is — everything else lags it by weeks.
The headline rate. Lags the cycle: it is usually still falling when a downturn begins.
Total employees on nonfarm payrolls. The monthly change in this series is the number markets react to.
Unfilled positions, from the JOLTS survey. Openings per unemployed person is the tightness measure the Fed watches.
Inflation
What prices are doing — at the till, at the factory gate, and stripped of noise.
Headline consumer prices. Includes food and energy, so it moves more than the underlying trend.
Consumer prices excluding food and energy. Closer to the persistent trend the Fed is actually targeting.
The Fed's preferred inflation gauge — the 2% target refers to this series, not CPI.
Prices received by domestic producers. Often leads consumer prices, since input costs pass through with a lag.
Consumer
Whether households are spending, and on what.
Visa's own spending data on non-essential purchases. Discretionary spending weakens before non-discretionary does.
Spending on essentials. Comparing the two is the useful part: a widening gap suggests households are cutting back.
University of Michigan survey. Sentiment and actual spending diverge more often than people expect.
Share of disposable income saved. A falling rate can mean confidence, or that households are running down buffers.
Risk appetite
What markets are paying for protection, and for safety.
Kansas City Fed composite across equities, gold and the dollar, liquidity, and credit spreads. Positive is risk-on.
The credit component of the composite above. Useful for seeing whether risk-off is being driven by credit specifically.
The liquidity component. Deteriorating liquidity often precedes wider stress.
Policy
What the Fed is doing, and where the market sits relative to it.
The overnight rate the Fed actually sets. Everything else in fixed income is priced off it.
Where the market is pricing the next few months of policy. Above the funds rate implies expected hikes; below, cuts.
The 10-year TIPS yield — the return after inflation. The number that actually matters for long-duration assets.
Inflation the bond market expects over ten years, implied by the gap between nominal and real yields.
Market vs the Fed
The 3-month bill against the overnight rate the Fed sets.
When the 3-month bill sits above the funds rate the market is pricing hikes; below it, cuts. The gap is a cleaner read on expectations than any survey.
All series from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), drawing on BLS, BEA, Census, the Federal Reserve, the Kansas City Fed, Cboe, the University of Michigan and Visa. Frequencies and reporting lags vary by series and are labelled individually.
Pipeline last run Fri, 23 Oct 2026 21:54:14 GMT.