The words the site uses, one definition each. Where a page first uses one of them, the word is underlined: hover, tap or focus it to read the definition without leaving the page.
One range of an indicator’s values with one color and one word.
Source: How to read this site
A call logged the day a gauge’s live reading first shows a new band; the scorecard grades whether the band held.
Source: Scorecard
How much of the economy is moving the same way: the count of indicators improving against those worsening.
Source: How to read this site
The inflation rate implied by the gap between regular and inflation-protected Treasury yields; the market’s inflation expectation.
Authorizations to begin new residential construction, counted monthly; the earliest official step in the housing pipeline, which is why it leads.
A change the site flags, such as stress building or a trend turning, saved on the day it appears and graded later against what actually happened.
Source: Methodology
Coincident moves with the economy (measures now); leading moves ahead of it (warns of what’s coming).
A weighted blend of indicators producing one score on the site’s common scale; the three gauges are composites.
The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure (personal consumption expenditures, excluding food and energy).
The extra yield investors demand to hold riskier corporate debt over government debt; widening signals stress.
A period that a rule opens and closes, so it can be counted.
Source: How to read this site
The part of corporate credit spreads that expected default risk does not explain: the risk-appetite component of credit pricing, which tightens before defaults appear.
The value a figure carried on the day it first came out, before any revision; the site keeps those values.
Source: How to read this site
The gauge built from leading series across credit, housing, orders, labor and financial conditions, displayed inverted so that a high score means low stress.
One of the three State of the Economy composites: a weighted blend of indicators, each ranked within its own history, read on one common scale where higher means healthier.
Source: How to read this site
One public economic series the site tracks (payrolls, a yield spread, a survey), with its own page and its own color rule.
Source: How to read this site
The gauge of how much room the Fed has: inflation measures scored on their distance from the Fed’s target in either direction, so inflation near target scores high.
The coincident gauge: how the economy is doing right now, built from growth, jobs, spending and output series, each ranked within its own history.
A recession as dated after the fact by the National Bureau of Economic Research, whose peak and trough dates the site scores its records against; the dates arrive with about a year’s lag.
Where a reading sits within its own history: the share of past readings it is higher than. The site’s scores are percentile ranks, so a high score means unusually strong for that series.
The months a reading stays at one level.
Source: How to read this site
A reading built only from figures published by that date, as originally published and not as later revised, wherever an archived first print exists.
Source: Methodology
The stage of the cycle the gauges name each month by fixed rules: Expansion, Slowdown, Contraction or Recovery.
Source: How to read this site
A later change to a figure already published; the Revisions Ledger measures how far first prints miss.
Source: How to read this site
A recession indicator based on the rise in unemployment off its recent low.
A month settles when its month-end score is written to the record as first published; it is never restated after.
The Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on bank lending standards.
A flag, not a stage: it fires when Forward Stress has fallen far from its own recent high while growth still reads healthy, and clears when stress eases or the stage leaves Expansion.
The heatmap on a past date: every cell as it was known that day, not as revised since.
Source: How to read this site
The direction state a gauge card shows when a month settles, with its horizon; it describes the recent months, and the scorecard grades it as a forecast of the months ahead.
A data series as it stood on one past day, before later revisions; the site reads a figure as first published from the vintage that actually stood on that day.
Source: Revisions Ledger — Methodology
The gap between long- and short-term interest rates; inversion (short above long) is a classic recession warning.