Friday, January 13, 2012

Misery Index

The misery index measures the squeeze on general standards of living as the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate.  It is a nice simple measurement of how much pain there is in the American economy at any given time.  Currently, the index is around 12, which while elevated isn't close to where it was in the 80s.


CPI is used for the inflation rate in this chart--it's arguable whether that gives an unbiased view of the inflation rate so it's possible this metric should be higher.

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