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I'm trying to put together a good list of economic indicators that press and economists look to when evaluating a president's "performance". These indicators should be ones that are updated at the least monthly.

What I have so far (with notes where necessary):

  • Unemployment rate
  • Debt
  • Deficit
  • GDP growth rate
  • Median household income (is this updated monthly?)
  • Median home value (is this updated monthly?)
  • Gallon of gasoline
  • DJIA
  • S&P 500
  • NASDAQ

Am I missing any and are the ones I flagged updated enough to be relevant?

Thanks

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2 Answers 2

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Get rid of the gasoline and the home value. Home value can only be used as an indicator of net worth and gasoline is dependant in most cases on too many outside factors. An important one you missed is the trade deficit, and I would add us bond interest rates too. Because they are a good indicator of how investors think about the us. I would also add the average household income, cause the difference between the average and the median is also interesting.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks. Are trade deficit, US bond interest rates and avg household income figures updated monthly as far as you know? If so best place to get these figures? My google-fu is failing me here. $\endgroup$
    – Tom
    Nov 18, 2016 at 16:16
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As suggested by the previous answer, definitely get rid of gas prices and median home value. You might also want to reconsider the way you look at the deficit, debt, and GDP growth rate as these are highly circumstantial; a better way to consider these as performance indicators is to compare their observed values to their trajectories at the end of the term of a predecessor.

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  • $\begingroup$ Yeah, that was the plan. Start with a base set of numbers and measure them over time. $\endgroup$
    – Tom
    Nov 19, 2016 at 2:10

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