Economic Indicator Links

These sites are where you need to go to find the unemployment rate, consumer price index (CPI), number of housing starts, what people are spending, retail sales, and so on.

Well, you can get deeper. Read the agency name below to get an idea of what to expect there (labor statistics have such data as income, employment, etc...)

Bureau of Economic Analysis
Bureau of Labor Statistics
National Bureau of Economic Research's Economic Indicators (Awesome)
U.S. Census Bureau Economic Indicators (Also Awesome)
Fed Data on Money Flow and Supply 

You can also use our handy database Economagic. But the above links will work just fine for most projects.

Link to Federal Reserve Speeches

Here's the link to past Fed Reserve speeches.

Don't fight the Fed, as they say. The speeches tell you what the Fed is going to do and their thought process. Right or wrong, they make the market, so listen.

Interest Rates on FRED

Decades worth of domestic US interest rates here.

Categories

Automobile Loan Rates (2) Bankers Acceptance Rate (5) Certificates of Deposit (21) Commercial Paper (25) Corporate Bonds (150) Credit Card Loan Rates (2) Eurodollar Deposits (9) FRB Rates - discount, fed funds, primary credit (21) Interest Checking Accounts (3) Interest Rate Swaps (24)

LIBOR Rates (150) Long-Term Securities (6) Money Market Accounts (3) Mortgage Rates (8) Personal Loan Rates (1) Prime Bank Loan Rate (4) Treasury Bills (21) Treasury Constant Maturity (48) Treasury Inflation-Indexed Securities (140)

Disposable Income

The BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) collects data on disposable personal income.

Current data here

Historical data here

Disability and Structural Unemployment

Great NPR article that discusses what we all know: getting on disability is a great way to hide older, unskilled, or industrial workers from the unemployment stats. 

Article doesn't criticize the people - it discusses this as a symptom of a larger problem: the hidden decline of America.

Facts and figures abound.

Consumer Confidence Index

The Consumer Confidence Index measures how well people are feeling about the economy. People rate their current situation and expectations for the future.


Here's an interesting NPR article about how the Consumer Confidence Index is measured.

To quote the journalist from that article: 

"Well, this is an index, meaning it's a number that tells you how you're doing compared to a benchmark. And in this case, the benchmark is the average amount of confidence Americans felt in the year 1985. The Conference Board chose that year 'cause it just happened to be a sort of normal year; it wasn't particular great, it wasn't particularly awful. So they say, OK, 1985, that's normal, that's 100."



Link to our database subscription of the numbers here (you can't get to them on Google).

 What it looks like inside:

USDA Agricultural Data

Here's a list of food and agricultural data stats from the USDA.

Topics covered includes: Crop outlook and productivity, prices, supplies, organic, commodities and more.

Sample screen shot below.

Shadow Stats: The Alternate to Official Statistics

Here's a great way to uncover some of the -ahem- controversial methodology behind our official government numbers. The alleged motivation? A desire to beguile the masses, lower government payouts to social security (which is tied to inflation) and good old fashioned naivety.

Blogging cult favorite John Williams has a website that shows his reasoning about revising the official figures of inflation and unemployment (among other things).

Read about Mr. Williams and decide for yourself.

There is no shortage of critics of John Williams (just look around). Here's blogging legend Mish discussing Williams's GDP methodology.

Consumer Prices: We Spent How Much on That?

Find out how much the American consumer spent on different categories of products. Pretty good product details - florists, lotteries, eyeglasses, sewing, taxicabs - to give you an idea of the level of coverage here. 

Once you're there:

1. Go to Section 2
2. Choose Table 2.4.5U

Small Business Statistics

Some tough stats about small business from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

These stats show that basically there are fewer and fewer small businesses and that their share of national income is smaller than you think.

The bright side: you get to learn business in a tough environment, giving you mad business skills.

Future Advertising Will Tilt Toward the Wealthy

In this AdAge white paper, the authors point out that almost half of consumer spending now comes from the upper echelon of American incomes. This contrasts with previous patterns of American consumption in which the middle class dominated consumer spending.

In other words, classic American advertising used to reflect the mentality of the the middle class.

Now get ready for ads that appeal to the upper class.

GINI Index Can Predict Social Unrest

May you live in interesting times.

Ever heard of the GINI index? Basically, it measures just how the poor are and how rich the rich are in relation to each other in any given country (full definition included on the link).

If you have allowed for differences in outcomes and ability, and your country still has an unusual disparity in wealth, that is a sign something isn't working.

Because you want to be careful investing in, exporting or importing to/from, or starting a business in a country that is about to go up in revolution.

Breakdown of Income Taxes By Income

This one is for the people interested in who pays INCOME taxes and how much and what their contribution is to the national tax receipts.

The IRS breaks down income tax stats by income group. If you follow this link, you'll have to negotiate a rather busy page of links to various tables.

But it's worth it to see how the economy is doing (less wages=less taxes) or if you want to wade into the waters of tax politics. Just remember, this represents INCOME taxes - not payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes or which socio-economic groups serve in the military ;)

Liber8 Website Is A Great Data Source

The St. Louis Fed has a great collection of data called LIBER8. Search a panoply of stats including money supply, sales of consumer products, unemployment rate, money in circulation, any economic indicator you can think of - and more.

2010 Beige Book Release Calendar

The Federal Reserve published the Beige Book - rather anecdotal accounts of current economic activity that is released a few times a year.

According to the Federal Reserve website:

"Each Federal Reserve Bank gathers anecdotal information on current economic conditions in its District through reports from Bank and Branch directors and interviews with key business contacts, economists, market experts, and other sources."

This is the schedule to the different 2010 Beige Book releases.

New Beige Book is Out

The Fed Reserve has released its current edition of the Beige Book. Editions come out eight times a year. The actual title is Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions.

This is the book that summarizes current economic conditions in different areas of the country. It's a little general in content, but it's often referred to by economic commentators.

Economic Indicators

Economic indicators collect data on significant or revealing economic activities and use that data to predict where the economy was, is or is going.

Those statistics that predict the future are called leading indicators. Those statistics that help us understand the past are called lagging indicators. It's important to remember that lagging indicators might help us understand the present and future. Or maybe not. Nothing is ever certain and anything can happen!

There are more economic indicators than you can shake a stick at! Most of them come from the government and have to do with what you'd expect: unemployment, housing sales, retail sales, inflation, etc...

Here is the quick guide to government collected economic indicators. You can also use our database Economagic.

A more detailed collection of indicators is from the National Bureau of Economic Analysis.

In another post we'll talk about some privately collected economic indicators and some weird ones!