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Topic
Economic data
17 guides in Finabase Learn
- Consumer sentiment and confidence: how the surveys work How the Michigan sentiment and Conference Board confidence indexes are built, why soft survey data and hard spending data disagree, and how to read them.
- Core inflation: why food and energy are left out What core inflation is, why it drops food and energy, how much monthly CPI noise it removes, and how to annualize and read core prints.
- GDP explained: how gross domestic product is measured and read What GDP counts, the C + I + G + NX arithmetic with real 2026 numbers, how annualized growth rates work, why the three estimates get revised, and how markets react.
- Gross domestic product (GDP) The total market value of goods and services produced in a country over a period; the broadest measure of economic output.
- Housing data: starts, permits and new home sales explained How to read the Census Bureau’s housing starts, building permits and new home sales reports: definitions, annual rates, confidence intervals, and what the history shows.
- How markets react to economic data: surprises, regimes, revisions Why stocks, bonds and the dollar move on the gap between data and forecasts, why good news can be bad news, and how revisions and positioning change the reaction.
- Industrial production and capacity utilization: the Fed’s G.17 What the Federal Reserve’s industrial production index and capacity utilization rate measure, how they are calculated, how to read them, and what 60 years of data show.
- Inflation A sustained rise in the general price level, which reduces the purchasing power of money over time.
- JOLTS The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, reporting monthly US job openings, hires, quits and layoffs.
- Nonfarm payrolls The monthly BLS count of US jobs added or lost outside farming, a headline figure in the first-Friday jobs report.
- PMI explained: how purchasing managers’ indexes work How a purchasing managers’ index is built from survey answers, what the 50 line means, how ISM and S&P Global PMIs differ, and why a PMI measures breadth, not size.
- Producer Price Index (PPI): final demand, pipeline prices and CPI What the Producer Price Index measures, how the final demand index is built, how PPI differs from CPI, and whether producer prices lead consumer prices.
- Real GDP growth The inflation-adjusted percentage change in GDP, reported quarterly in the US at a seasonally adjusted annual rate.
- Retail sales report: what it measures and how to read it How the Census Bureau’s monthly retail sales report is built, why it is not adjusted for inflation, the control group arithmetic, confidence intervals and revisions.
- Seasonal adjustment and data revisions: why the numbers change How agencies remove seasonal patterns, what annualized rates mean, and how GDP and payroll figures get revised, with BEA revision statistics and BLS benchmarks.
- The CPI report: how BLS builds it and how to read it How the Consumer Price Index is built (basket, weights, shelter and owners’ equivalent rent), what headline and core mean, and how to read m/m and y/y changes.
- What is a recession? How the NBER dates US recessions How the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee decides when US recessions start and end, why “two negative quarters” is not the rule, and what 2001 and 2022 show.
Educational content, not investment advice. Finabase Learn explains how markets and tools work. It does not recommend any security or strategy, and examples are for illustration only. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Rules and figures are for the United States unless stated and can change — check the cited source before you act.