What is the Men's Underwear Index?

Men defer boring purchases when worried about money. When underwear sales dip, consumer confidence has already cracked — Alan Greenspan cited this as a leading indicator of economic sentiment.

What is the Cardboard Box Index?

Every shipment needs a box. Cardboard box production is a surprisingly clean leading indicator for real economic activity, often moving a quarter before GDP catches up.

What is the Big Mac Index?

The Economist invented the Big Mac Index in 1986 as a lighthearted measure of purchasing power parity. Same burger, same process everywhere — the price tells you exactly how far your dollar goes relative to other currencies.

What is the Temp Staffing Index?

Employers hire temporary workers before committing to permanent staff — and cut them first when conditions worsen. The Temp Staffing Index consistently leads total payroll employment by 2–3 months, making it one of the cleanest early warning signals in the labor market.

What is the Lipstick Index?

Estée Lauder's Leonard Lauder noticed lipstick sales jumped as the 2001 recession hit. The theory: when consumers cut big luxuries, they substitute small affordable ones. Lipstick sales rising in a downturn has held up across multiple recessions as a reliable consumer sentiment signal.

What is the Used Car Price Index?

Used car prices are hyper-sensitive to credit conditions and supply chain shocks. In 2021, used vehicle prices alone were responsible for roughly a third of U.S. CPI inflation — a single line item moving the headline number economists use to set monetary policy.

What are leading economic indicators?

Leading economic indicators are data points that tend to change before the broader economy shifts. Unlike GDP — which is reported months after the fact and revised repeatedly — leading indicators like temp staffing, cardboard box shipments, and credit card delinquency rates give an early read on where the economy is heading.

Why are alternative economic indicators more accurate than GDP?

Official GDP figures are released with a significant lag, revised multiple times, and subject to methodological smoothing. Alternative indicators like temp staffing employment, cardboard box shipments, and Big Mac prices update faster, are harder to manipulate, and reflect what real people are actually doing with their money.

Are we in a recession right now?

GDPv2's real-time recession probability score aggregates leading alternative indicators — temp staffing, credit card delinquency, cardboard box shipments, and consumer sentiment — into a 0–100 score updated daily. Official GDP lags by months. Alternative indicators lead by quarters. The dashboard shows the current score and the signals driving it.

What is recession probability and how is it measured?

Recession probability is an estimate of the likelihood that the U.S. economy is in or entering a recession, based on leading indicators. GDPv2 calculates it by weighting temp staffing trends, credit card delinquency rates, cardboard box production, and S&P 500 direction — all of which historically lead official recession declarations by one to three quarters.

Are we in a recession right now?

GDPv2's real-time recession probability score provides a current read based on leading alternative indicators — temp staffing, credit card delinquency, cardboard box shipments, and the Men's Underwear Index. Official NBER recession declarations lag by 6–18 months. GDPv2's score updates daily using data that historically leads those declarations by one to three quarters. Check the live score at gdpv2.com.

What is the GDPv2 recession probability score?

The GDPv2 recession probability score is a 0–100 composite index that blends traditional indicators (unemployment, S&P 500, temp staffing, consumer sentiment, credit card delinquency) with alternative leading indicators (cardboard box shipments, Big Mac Index, Men's Underwear Index). Scores above 60 indicate elevated recession risk. The score updates daily and is designed to signal stress before official GDP figures confirm it.

← GDPv2

Alternative Economic Indicator

Restaurant Employment

Restaurants hire and fire fast. When this drops, households have already cut back.

Current Value

N/A

Trend

↑ N/A

Why Restaurants?

Eating out is the discretionary expense most households cut first. It's frequent, visible, and easy to cancel — unlike a lease or a car payment. When restaurant employment drops, the reason is almost always the same: customers stopped coming. That's a real spending contraction, showing up in payroll data before retail sales figures have a chance to confirm it.

No Severance, No Lag

Restaurants hire and fire faster than almost any other sector. No notice period, no severance, no multi-step HR process. When consumer spending softens, restaurant headcount reflects it within weeks — not the quarter-plus lag you see in manufacturing or professional services. It's the most unfiltered read on whether people are spending.

Whose Economy It Measures

Restaurant spending is concentrated in middle- and lower-income households. When GDP is still printing positive but restaurant employment is falling, growth is happening somewhere — just not where most people live. That divergence is the actual signal.

Compare on dashboard

See Restaurant Employment vs official economic data in real time

Open Dashboard →

More Indicators

Big Mac Index Men's Underwear Index Cardboard Box Index Temp Staffing Index Lipstick Index Credit Card Delinquency Rate Used Car Price Index Recession Search Volume TSA Passenger Volume Electricity Generation Index Retail Sales Recession Probability Score

THE SCORE, EVERY MONDAY.

Stay up to date.