Leading economic indicators

They are economic measures that tend to change direction before the economy as a whole does, so they are watched for early signs of a slowdown or a recovery. Examples are the shape of the yield curve, new jobless claims, building permits and new factory orders. Lagging indicators such as the unemployment rate turn afterwards, and coincident ones such as industrial production move with the economy.

16 US series in 5 groups. Financial conditions: 10-year minus 3-month treasury spread, 10-year minus 2-year treasury spread, chicago fed financial conditions index, st. louis fed financial stress index, banks tightening business-loan standards. Labor market: initial jobless claims, 4-week average, average weekly hours, manufacturing, temporary help employment. Housing and orders: building permits, housing starts, core capital goods orders, new orders, consumer goods. Business surveys: philadelphia fed manufacturing index, empire state manufacturing index, chicago fed national activity index, 3-month average. Money: m2 money supply. Below them is the OECD composite leading indicator for 18 economies.

On 23 Oct 2026 the 10-year minus 3-month Treasury spread was +0.78 pp, so the curve is not inverted by that measure, and the 10-year minus 2-year spread was +0.31 pp (not inverted). The 10-year minus 3-month spread was last below zero on 16 Oct 2025. An inverted curve has come before most US recessions since the 1960s, usually by 6 to 18 months, and has also given false alarms, so it is one input and not a verdict.

Each indicator is compared with its own reading about three months earlier, in the direction that normally goes with a stronger economy: higher for building permits or orders, lower for jobless claims or financial stress. A move smaller than a tenth of the indicator's ten-year standard deviation counts as flat. It describes the recent move and is not a forecast.

No. The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index is a copyrighted composite, so this page does not reproduce it. Close public equivalents of several of its inputs are here: manufacturing hours, jobless claims, consumer-goods orders, core capital goods orders, building permits and the yield spread. Instead of blending them into one number, the page counts how many indicators improved, stayed flat or worsened.

The OECD builds one for each economy from a basket of timely series such as orders, confidence surveys, building permits and interest-rate spreads, scaled so that 100 is the long-term trend. It is designed to signal turning points in activity relative to trend about six to nine months ahead. Above 100 and rising is the OECD's expansion phase, above 100 and falling is slowdown, below 100 and falling is contraction, and below 100 and rising is recovery.

Not on their own. Every one of them has produced false alarms, and the lead time varies from a few months to well over a year. Used together they show whether the weak spots are spreading or narrowing, which is what the breadth count at the top of the page tracks. Nothing on this page is a forecast.

A job reloads every series each night from FRED, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis's database, which relays the official releases. The yield spreads update daily, jobless claims and the financial indexes weekly, and the rest monthly or quarterly when their agencies publish, so most lines change only about once a month. The as-of column shows each series' own latest date. Monthly figures are often revised later and the page shows the revised numbers.