Macro Overview

Key FRED inputs

• Labor inputs — Unemployment rate, job openings, size of the civilian labor force, prime-age employment ratio, and weekly jobless claims.
• Inflation inputs — Headline and core CPI, core PCE, trimmed-mean PCE, median CPI, breakeven inflation expectations, real 5y/10y yields, and the effective fed funds rate.
• Risk inputs — 10-year vs 3-month and 10-year vs 2-year Treasury spreads, Conference Board LEI, state coincident breadth, and initial claims momentum.
• Housing inputs — 30-year mortgage rates, national home price index, wage proxy, high-yield credit spreads, consumer loan delinquencies, months' supply, bank credit, and new home sales.
• Growth inputs — Nonfarm payrolls, real consumption, capacity utilization, ISM manufacturing, industrial production, retail sales, core durable orders, and real GDP.
• Policy inputs — Fed funds rate, core PCE, NAIRU vs unemployment gap, real vs potential GDP, financial conditions index, and the Federal Reserve balance sheet.
• Yield curve inputs — Treasury yields from 1 month through 30 years plus the derived term spreads.
• Financial conditions inputs — Chicago Fed financial conditions index and its five-year percentile.

Regime vocabulary

Labor (Tight / Loosening / Cooling)

Score ≥ +1 when unemployment is falling, the openings-to-unemployed ratio stays above 1.2, and claims trend lower; score ≤ −1 when the opposite is true.

Inflation (Cooling / Sticky / Re-accelerating)

Short-horizon core PCE is compared with the 12‑month pace as well as trimmed-mean and median gauges.

Risk (Green / Yellow / Red)

A z-scored composite of LEI YoY, the 10Y-3M spread, state breadth, and claims momentum is clipped to a 0‑100 scale.

Housing (Benign / Tightening / Stressed)

A 60-month z-score of HY OAS, mortgage rates, delinquencies, and months' supply dictates the label.

Growth (Accelerating / Flat / Slowing)

Average YoY growth across industrial production, retail sales, core goods orders, and real GDP determines the badge.

Policy (Easy / Neutral / Tight)

Policy gap = Fed funds minus a Taylor proxy plus a check on the real FFR; NFCI percentiles label financial conditions (Loose / Neutral / Tight).

Yield curve (Normal / Flat / Inverted)

The 10Y-3M spread above 20 bps is Normal, between 0 and 20 bps is Flat, and below 0 bps is Inverted.

Additional context

• Weekly releases (claims, HY OAS, NFCI) update intraday once FRED posts; monthly and quarterly data refresh after the 8:30 a.m. ET prints.
• Sparklines show the most recent 36 months, and percentile ribbons reference rolling five-to-ten-year windows for historical context.