For many, economics feels like an artificial invention — a moving target where the goal posts shift depending on who’s trying to win the argument. And while it’s true that the field attracts more than its fair share of snake oil, the underlying system is still rooted in real, measurable science. I built a dashboard that lets me quickly track several of the core indicators of the U.S. economy so I can “check in” on its overall health without spinning up another 500-page think piece.
Scope
Use trusted, publicly available data to build a dashboard grounded in first-principles economic indicators. No political color-commentary, no narrative stretching — just clean data, best practices, and transparent methodology.
Methodology
For data ingestion, the FRED database did most of the heavy lifting. I used the FRED API with Streamlit and Pandas to pull each dataset, normalize them, and combine them into a handful of meaningful composite metrics. Most of the work was in structuring the helper DataFrames and making sure the denominators matched the date ranges, especially for the labor metrics.
Unemployed Americans, Open Positions, and Staffing Ratio
This metric answers a deceptively simple question: How many available jobs are there for each unemployed American?
A ratio above 1 = more open jobs than unemployed people → tight labor market.
A ratio below 1 = more unemployed people than open jobs → loose labor market.
To calculate it, I created a helper DataFrame joining the unemployed population with total job openings. And like any labor metric, both inputs carry well-known caveats: unemployment counts only those actively seeking work, while job postings assume the roles are legitimate, currently hiring, and not ghost listings. None of those assumptions are perfect, but they remain the closest approximation we have.
Labor Force Participation Rate
This measures what percentage of working-age adults are either employed or actively seeking work. It’s one of the best top-line indicators of how engaged the population is with the labor market. Rising participation means more people entering the workforce; declining participation raises questions about long-term labor supply, aging, or structural barriers.
Consumer Price Index (CPI)
CPI tracks the average change in prices paid by consumers for a standard “basket” of goods and services. It’s the most common proxy for inflation.
Put simply: How much does it cost to maintain my lifestyle? More than last year, or less?
Producer Price Index (PPI)
PPI measures how much producers are charging for the goods and services they create — effectively wholesale inflation.
A simpler way to frame it: How expensive is it to make the stuff that eventually lands on my grocery receipt?
Because producers adjust before consumers feel it, PPI changes often appear upstream of CPI changes.
Gini Index
The Gini Index measures income inequality on a scale from 0 (total equality) to 100 (total inequality). It’s usually used for cross-country comparisons, but it still tells a meaningful story in the U.S. about how income distribution shifts over time. While the index tends to move slowly, it often becomes a talking point during periods of economic stress, so I included a long-term historical view for context.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
GDP is the total value of everything the U.S. produces — the broadest snapshot of economic activity. Two consecutive quarters of decline meet the technical definition of a recession; one quarter of decline is an early warning of elevated recession risk. Tracking this helps contextualize broader macro signals.
National Debt Insights
The national debt reflects how much the U.S. owes its creditors. High debt isn’t inherently “bad,” but the rate of change matters. What I’m tracking here is deficit spending — whether we’re increasing the debt, shrinking it, or (rarely) running a surplus. The double-negative phrasing can get confusing, so I structured the visuals to make the direction of movement easier to read at a glance.
Interest Rate Insights
The federal funds rate sets the baseline cost of borrowing. Banks use it to price everything from mortgages to commercial loans.
In plain English: How expensive is money right now?
Higher rates slow borrowing and cool spending; lower rates do the opposite.
Fertility Rate
The fertility rate measures the average number of children born per couple — an uncomfortable but critical component of long-term economic forecasting. Workforce sizes 15–20 years from now depend on today’s demographic trends. Ignoring fertility entirely would leave a major blind spot in future labor supply analysis.
Results
The dashboard is publicly available here. Take it for a spin — explore the trends, compare time periods, and pressure test your own assumptions. My hope is that it becomes a practical, narrative-free way to stay grounded in what’s actually happening, not what’s being claimed.
Source
Federal Reserve Economic Data | FRED | St. Louis Fed. (n.d.). Retrieved November 26, 2025, from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/
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