From skirt lengths to satellite images to a blockchain tracker, here are 11 quirky and serious indicators you can use to sanity-check the new inflation and employment numbers.
In 2025, trust in America’s official economic data, like trust in so many institutions, is crumbling—not because the numbers have been proven false, but because President Trump has suddenly turned them into a political litmus test.
After a weak July jobs report, and a downward revision of May and June numbers, Trump pulled a “kill the messenger” move by firing Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, writing on Truth Social: “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”
Economists of all stripes (including Trump’s own BLS Commissioner during his first term) insisted there was no evidence that McEntarfer was anything but a diligent and straight shooter. No matter. In her place, Trump has nominated E.J. Antoni, a Heritage Foundation economist, MAGA stalwart and BLS critic who once joked that “the ‘L’ is silent” in the agency’s acronym.
Harvard economist Jason Furman, a former Obama adviser, broke his own rule of staying quiet on nominees to say Antoni is “completely unqualified,” “an extreme partisan,” and “a break from decades of nonpartisan technocrats.”
The result: Trump critics worry that if Antoni is confirmed, the numbers coming out of BLS, which tracks the most-watched economic stats in the country, including inflation, unemployment, and payrolls, will be cooked to support whatever claims Trump is making about the economy. And Trump faithful believe they already were being cooked.
While this sort of attack from a President with his own social media company is new, there’s long been a cottage industry of websites promoting alternative inflation figures. They almost always say it’s higher than the official number (their accuracy can be transitory). The same for unemployment — plenty of backyard economists perpetually claim the real figure is much worse. Even GDP has its skeptics who will tell you we’re in a recession no matter what the Bureau of Economic Analysis says.
You don’t have to be a crank or mistrust the government to appreciate alternative indicators. Even economist Alan Greenspan, who chaired the Federal Reserve for 18 years, had his favorite measure, which he believed could predict a coming downturn or recovery before the official numbers: sales of men’s underwear.
There’s no shortage of alternatives. Some are straightforward — private payroll counts, consumer price trackers. Others are quirky — skirt lengths, lipstick sales, pawn shop activity. They’re imperfect and hard to verify if you don’t trust the official data. But they can serve as a gut check, especially if Antoni follows through on his suggestion to pause the monthly jobs report. If the official stats slow down, these alternatives might offer a rough gauge. When official and oddball stats move together, it might mean the government numbers hold some truth.
But even the most straightforward indicators need solid ground to stand on, which brings us to a tricky catch: Alternative data is only as good as the reliable standard you measure it against.
Ran Shorrer, an associate professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University, says the big advantage of official statistics is that “this is what we have that’s comparable across years.” Without that historical anchor to compare alternative numbers to, it’s hard to tell if they still work when conditions change.
Joshua Blumenstock, the co-director of the Global Opportunity Lab and the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California at Berkeley, whose research leverages novel data to address economic challenges, says economists call this the Lucas Critique — when the system changes, the relationships you relied on in the past can break. Blumenstock gives the example of Google Flu Trends, a tool developed in 2008 by Google that tracked flu outbreaks by analyzing search data. It worked at first, but as search algorithms and media coverage changed, its predictions became unreliable, overshooting actual flu cases in 100 out of 108 weeks.
That’s all to say that alternative gauges aren’t gold-plated truth, any more than Washington’s stats are divine writ.
With all that in mind, here’s a mix of serious and strange measures you can use to sanity-check the economy. Some will make you nod. Some will make you roll your eyes. All of them should be taken with a grain of salt.
💵 ADP Payroll Data
Alternative for: Nonfarm Payrolls, Employment Situation Summary
Payroll processor ADP publishes a monthly report on private-sector job growth. It comes out two days before the BLS jobs report and sometimes points in a different direction. Fans like that it’s based on actual payroll data from millions of workers. Critics point out it leaves out government jobs, uses different seasonal adjustments, and can swing wildly from month to month. That’s why it often misses the mark compared to the official figures — but it still gives an early read on hiring. It’s closely watched and will become even more so if official jobs numbers are paused.
📈 Truflation US Aggregate Inflation Index
Alternative for: Consumer Price Index
A blockchain-based project that pulls in real-time price data from multiple sources to estimate inflation. Supporters like that it updates daily, claims independence from government methodology, and avoids the lag and revisions of the CPI. Skeptics note that its sources aren’t always transparent, its basket of goods differs from the official one, and its readings often come in higher than CPI — which might say more about the inputs than any “truth” it’s uncovering. It’s part of a long line of CPI-alternative stats, from ShadowStats to the Chapwood Index, that appeal to a certain type of skeptic (cough, cough, gold bugs). Its accuracy is still up for debate, but it’s a modern entry in the “official numbers are wrong” canon.
👗 Hemline Index
Alternative for: Consumer Confidence, Retail Sales Trends
The idea is simple: when skirts get shorter, the economy is doing well. Longer hemlines? Not so good. The theory dates back to the 1920s and has been revived in various boom-and-bust cycles since. No one is running an official Hemline Bureau, but fashion magazines and Google search data make it possible to eyeball the trend. It’s a stretch to use it for GDP, but as a mood ring for consumer confidence, it’s been oddly persistent.
🌃 Nighttime Lights and Satellite Imagery
Alternative for: Regional GDP, Industrial Production
Satellites show how bright the world is at night. Brighter areas usually mean more economic activity. Researchers have used this to measure GDP growth in countries with bad or unreliable stats. In the U.S., it could serve as a cross-check on regional economic data. NASA and private firms make the images public, though interpreting them takes some expertise.
Artificial intelligence is changing that. “The computer is really good at identifying the patterns,” University of San Francisco economist Arman Khachiyan says. AI can spot an industrial building here, a park there, and then link those features to income or population changes without anyone having to label the structures by hand. In one study he coauthored, researchers trained neural networks on high-resolution daytime satellite images and Census data to predict local income and population changes. Their model beat night light analysis by a wide margin at the neighborhood scale, showing how machine learning can turn raw imagery into detailed economic insights.
🏝️ Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index
Alternative for: Consumer Price Index (CPI)
Since 1982, Forbes has tracked the price of a basket of ultra-luxury goods – like Gucci loafers, caviar, and private jets – to gauge inflation for the billionaire set. Think of it as the Consumer Price Index for the Forbes 400. In 2024, CLEWI rose 4.7%, compared to CPI’s 2.9%. It can hint at broader inflation trends, or just make you feel better about your own rising grocery bill since it typically overshoots CPI
🍔 Big Mac Index
Alternative for: Consumer Price Index, Food Inflation
The Economist has tracked this since 1986 as a lighthearted way to compare purchasing power between countries. In the U.S., changes in the price can be a crude check on food inflation and broader price trends. It’s not a perfect match for the Consumer Price Index, but it’s a simple way to spot rising prices at the counter.
🛎️ Help Wanted OnLine Index
Alternative for: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS)
Before the internet, The Conference Board tracked job ads in newspapers as a hiring gauge. Today, it tracks openings online, but you can also eyeball Indeed, LinkedIn, and ZipRecruiter if you want to track it on your own. It lines up with BLS job openings data but comes from private sources, making it an alternative if you don’t trust the government numbers.
💄 Lipstick Effect
Alternative for: Consumer Spending, Discretionary Retail Sales
When times get tough, people cut back on big-ticket items but still splurge on small luxuries. The late billionaire Leonard Lauder, the eldest son of Estée Lauder, coined the term after noticing lipstick sales rise during downturns. Cosmetics industry sales data can be a proxy for discretionary spending and consumer sentiment. It’s not perfect — sometimes trends or viral products swamp the signal — but it offers a look at spending patterns.
♟️ Pawn Shop Index
Alternative for: Household Debt, Consumer Credit Reports
When more people are pawning items, it’s often a sign of financial stress. The National Pawnbrokers Association tracks some industry data, and large pawn chains such as FirstCash Holdings and EZCORP are publicly traded and report their earnings. It’s an indirect way to check household financial health, especially for lower-income households. Think of it as a shadow consumer credit indicator.
☕ Coffee Shop Index
Alternative for: Consumer Spending, Labor Force Participation
The idea: Busy coffee shops mean more people are out spending, commuting, and meeting. It’s an informal measure of both consumer activity and return-to-office trends. Square and other payment processors sometimes publish aggregated spending data that can make this semi-official, but for the most part you’ll want to track this in person. Like many of these, it’s directional, not definitive.
🩳 Men’s Underwear Index
Alternative for: Consumer Spending, Personal Consumption Expenditures
The idea, embraced by Greenspan, is that since boxers and briefs can’t be seen, when money is tight, men will put off replacing underwear until they absolutely have to. So sales drop when consumers are feeling stretched (perhaps foretelling a recession) and pick up as the economy is recovering. It’s not tracked by the BLS, but private retail sales data can give you a look. Hanesbrands earnings calls are as close as you’ll get to a quarterly reading on this. Though that might be difficult soon too, as Hanesbrands is being purchased by Canadian apparel company Gildan Activewear in a $2.2 billion deal that was announced on Aug. 12.
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