What’s Your Economic Indicator?
We all have personal key economic indicators we use to gauge whether the economy is heading up or down. Is yours how many resumes your company receives for a job posting? The price of class-A office space? Or perhaps something more trivial like the length of the line at Starbucks? Share yours with us here.
One good leading economic indicator to consider is “Corrugated Box Shipments” — this indicator comes from paper good manufacturers which represent the boxes used to ship products. The boxes can be ordered by manufacturers and shippers just prior to the expectation of shipping finished product.
Good one David. I like to look at ad rates for tv/radio spots and the cost per click (CPC) rates for specific Google purchases for non-essential items.
Steve Rojas
Icon Marketing
http://icon-marketing.com/
The word among land brokers we’ve polled is that prices for finished lots are being gobbled up at a fairly alarming rate by the public homebuilders. 18 months ago, finished lots were almost worthless; 6 months ago, I was told lots were selling in the $10k/lot range in Southern California’s Inland Empire, now, the same areas are fetching anywhere between $80k to $100k for Single Family Dwelling unit finished lots. No matter what people say, history in SoCal has pretty much shown, that when homes are being built, our economy is rolling in the right direction and this news is cautiously encouraging to me.
Employers are often more inclined to hire temporary or contract workers before committing to hiring full time employees. Activity levels in the contract staffing business can be an indicator of things to come. My friends at a few local contract staffing firms, who deal primarily with finance, accounting and technology requirements, have told me that business has picked up over the last 3 – 4 months.