What Are Economic Indicators? A Beginner’s Guide
Economic indicators summarize activity, prices, jobs, trade, and confidence. Learn how leading, coincident, and lagging data are released and interpreted.
Economic indicators are statistics used to assess the direction and health of an economy. They help readers understand whether activity is expanding or slowing and provide evidence about prices, employment, production, spending, and confidence. These guides explain major releases such as GDP, consumer price indexes, employment reports, retail sales, industrial production, and purchasing managers indexes. Learn how indicators are calculated, when they are published, and why markets can react sharply when results differ from expectations.