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I’ve talked about it in the past week or so; little indicators of the economy’s health. Well, here is a list from Time that compiles some of the more strange indicators of the economy and what they mean.

1. Hikers. When times are hard and unemployment is high, people tend to have a lot more free time on their hands. This means there is a spike in the number of people going for hikes in national parks and other places as well.

2. Immigration into the United States. For a while now, like decades, the number of immigrants coming into the U.S. has been rising. However, now with a bad economy, the number has slowed down and even stalled a bit. It seems like our country isn’t as attractive as it once was.

3. Men’s Underwear. I talked about this one in a post I wrote last week about ties. I think this one is just silly. But, the idea is that men buy more underwear when the economy starts picking up. When the economy is down sales of men’s underwear drops dramatically.

4. Fewer babies are being born and planned. In a recent survey of women, 44% said that they were going to wait to have kids until the economy starts to pick up. This means that the sale of birth control items should be up, right?

5. More attractive waitresses. This is another silly one in my opinion. The idea behind this “index” is that attractive women don’t have a hard time finding work being models or working for some kind of marketing campaign when times are good. However, now that times aren’t so great, they are finding themselves working at restaurants. And restaurant owners are more than willing to hire the pretty girls to be waitresses so it will bring customers in.

Like I said, the whole thing is kind of silly. I mean, you can also look at more reliable sources to tell you how the economy is doing like unemployment as well as sales figures. I always thought that if sales in some industries were up then the economy is probably doing better than if sales are down.

The economy is one of those things that have many indicators ranging from the very silly to the very serious. Hopefully most of the indicators are pointing to the economy starting to pick up and maybe we’ll start seeing some growth soon.

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Jeremy

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