Economic Indicators are statistics about significant, relevant economic activity. Economic indicators are generally classified into three categories: (1) Leading indicators, (2) Coincident indicators, and (3) Lagging indicators. Business owners are mostly concerned with leading and coincident economic indicators as a means of predicting the strength or weakness of the economy which helps in making investment decisions, including whether to buy or sell a business. Leading indicators include the number of new building permits issued, average weekly jobless claims, new orders for non-defense capital goods, inventory levels, retail sales, arid the number of new business startups.

U.S. National Debt Clock: Real Time