Forecasting where business is going seems to be getting harder and harder to do. Trying to foresee what unemployment will do, where GDP may go to, and what kind of inflation numbers we need to be concerned with seem to be almost impossible to forecast, at least the experts I see have done a pretty abysmal job. In a magazine article in Smart Money Magazine I think I may have found some things that could give us a clue as to where our economy, and our future is going.

They came up with some little watched statistical “barometers” that may be part of the answer to improve on forecasting the future. For Jobs, they suggest “JOLTS”. They say the jobs report shows how many people are not working, while the Jolts report shows how many people are leaving or starting a new job. As an economy strengthens, more people will be starting a new job than leaving an old one, vice versa in a declining economic environment. The other one for jobs is the number of hours worked, being much more valuable than the numbers of people hired. The Employment Situation Summary is where you find the hours information, but if you want to dig deeper, there is more detailed information by industry at www.bls.gov.

They go on to say that disposable personal income is a better wage growth number as a forecasting tool. The data is what people earn less tax and can be found at www.bea.gov. The pundits say it showed the growth in restaurant sales this past year and if it continues to grow at the same rate, big-ticket items should be on the horizon.

To track bank lending better than the quarterly bank officer survey, try the Release H.8 available on the Fed’s website www.Federalreserve.gov. It shows the trends of how much banks are lending for commercial loans on line 10.

With the ascension of the internet, I’m starting to understand just how much information is out there, and maybe even where to find some of it. Now the trick will be to manipulate all this available data into real, useable information to try to do a better job as to where we are going as a nation, an industry, and then an individual company. Good luck and good researching.