Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders are indicators due to being tied to consumer expectations and new orders for consumer goods, as well as inventory levels. Since this category includes durable and non-durable goods, it encompasses a large percentage of economic activity. Manufacturers ship materials and maintain them in inventory based on the number of orders they anticipate they will receive. It also involves production workers, who are required to take in orders, maintain inventories and perform shipping functions. If there is a large degree of shipments and inventories to maintain, more workers are required. A decrease in orders, inventories and shipments can result in a decrease of personnel required. This affects the economy if unemployment results and potential consumers are unable to purchase as much as they would like. If shipments are delayed, deliveries from suppliers may suffer because they don't have the raw materials on hand to fill requests. In turn, orders from the manufacturer can be slowed, resulting in customer dissatisfaction and order cancellations. If orders are cancelled after the item is manufactured, then the manufacturer now has additional inventory to maintain, and they may have to hire additional workers or find additional inventory space. This indicator can change as a result of consumer preferences, employment trends affecting the number of skilled workers available for hire, and governmental regulations that can affect methods of shipment.

Sectoral Production, and Inventories; Consumer Spending; Housing and Construction; and Foreign Trade.

Housing Starts and Building Permits are the economic indicator used to measure privately owned housing units started and privately owned housing units authorized by building permits. These are considered good leading indicators of home sales and spending in general. Housing Starts are used to predict the residential investment portion of the GDP. Building Permits usually become Housing Starts in about three to four months. Building Permits are also a component of the leading economic indicators index. Single-family starts account for approximately 74 percent of all starts, and Multi-family units account for the rest.

Foreign trade is the economic indicator that measures our economy and GNP against those of other countries the U.S. trades with. The main factor that is tracked is the balance of trade; which is the difference between the value of goods and services a country imports, and the value of the goods and services it exports. This difference will produce what is known as a trade deficit (what occurs when imports exceed exports) or a trade surplus (exports exceed imports).

The tightening of credit in private sector is likely to slow housing activity in the next few months. The interest rate on fixed-rate mortgages has averaged 8 ¼ percent so far this year, marking its highest rate since the middle of 1996. The homebuilders' index of prospective buyer's traffic has been on a downslide since last spring, and sales of new and existing homes have declined since the summer. This is a normal cyclical trend, and building and sales should pick back up in the spring despite increases in mortgage rates.

Analyst use economic data to forecast other economic series by monitoring various behavioral links due to one type of economic activity generally having an impact on another type of economic activity. For example, an unexpected increase in housing sales will lead to a drop in houses for sale as well as in the months' supply of houses for sale. If housing stocks decline below desired levels, then builders take out housing permits, initiate housing starts, and work toward completing houses by construction spending. This cycle can differ when production is based on expected changes in the business cycle. Furthermore, housing stocks may be built up in anticipation of housing sales rather than housing being replenished

Some common words found in the essay are:
Census Bureau, Account Balance, Consumption Expenditures, Trade Inventories, Corporate Profits, Shipments Inventories, Inventories Durable, Personal Income, Retail Sales, January February, retail sales, consumption expenditures, trade deficit, building permits, personal consumption expenditures, personal consumption, housing starts, consumer spending, annual rate, national output income, personal income, foreign trade, principle economic indicators, bureau economic analysis, construction spending data,
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