Reading the Economy: A Practical Guide to Key Indicators
What the sessions cover
Program Overview
- Module 1: What economic indicators are and how they are produced
- Module 2: Output indicators — GDP, GNP, and industrial production
- Module 3: Labour market data — employment, participation rates, wage growth
- Module 4: Price indicators — CPI, PPI, core vs. headline inflation
- Module 5: Leading, lagging, and coincident indicators explained
- Module 6: Reading a data release — practical exercises with real reports
How sessions are structured
Each module includes a short lecture, a guided reading of an actual data release, and a discussion exercise. Sessions run twice per week and recordings are available for 90 days.
Understanding economic indicators — what this program addresses
Published 09/2025. Reading takes approximately 6 min read.
Most people hear terms like CPI or PMI on the news and move on. This program is for those who want to stop guessing and start understanding what those numbers actually measure, how they are collected, and why they sometimes contradict each other.
What the numbers are really tracking
Economic indicators are not abstract statistics — they reflect real decisions made by households, businesses, and governments. GDP tells you the size of the economy but misses distribution. Unemployment figures depend heavily on how joblessness is defined in a given country.
You will work through the most commonly cited indicators one by one: what each measures, what it leaves out, and how analysts use it alongside other data to form a clearer picture.
Where interpretation gets complicated
A falling unemployment rate sounds positive until you learn that discouraged workers are excluded from the headline figure. A rising GDP sounds healthy until you factor in inflation. These are the kinds of tensions this program addresses directly.
Understanding an indicator means knowing both what it captures and what it deliberately ignores.
By the end, you will be able to read an economic data release, identify what questions it answers, and recognize the gaps that require additional context. No prior economics background is required — just a willingness to think carefully about numbers.