Economic Indicators

- The economy is like oxygen. It's all around you, even if you don't think about it. It impacts your professional options, your investments, and whether or not you have a job. And you need to understand what's going on in the economy in order to make good decisions about your company, your career, and your investments. This series will help you understand where to find the most valuable reports, and what the most important numbers to watch in each report are. This is all so you can make the best decisions possible.

I'm Jason Schenker, and I've been writing about economic indicators for 15 years. I've worked in both investment banking and consulting, and since 2009, I've advised executives on business strategy and financial risks, in a firm focused on economics called Prestige Economics. In this series, you'll learn about dozens of important economic indicators that will help you understand what's going on in the economy around you, and how each indicator impacts your personal, professional, and financial life.

We'll look at reports that cover big economic concepts, like growth, unemployment, and inflation. We'll talk about important sector data, like home sales and auto sales. And we'll dig into economic data that hits your wallet. Like how interest rates can affect what you pay for a mortgage, how stock prices trade, and how strong your currency is. This series is focused on the practical value of economic data. So don't worry, we won't be doing any weird formulas with Greek letters in this course.

But, we'll be talking about economic reports that you can easily access online that have data you'll be able to understand and apply. By the end of this series, you might not be ready for an interview on Bloomberg Television, or CNBC to discuss the latest employment report. But you'll be aware of data that you may never have known existed, and you'll known how to find value in that data. There's an old joke that economists are too smart for their own good, but not smart enough for anyone else's.

Sometimes that's true, but it won't be in this course. In this series, we'll turn that joke on its head so you get smart about economics for your own good, and so you can help others. With that in mind, let's get started.