Is the economy hot or cold?
Central banks raise interest rates when an economy runs hot and cut them when it runs cold. Here is where each major economy sits right now. Tap a country for the detail.
Example data: made-up numbers, only for checking the layout.
How to read this
- Hot, warm, in line, cool, cold: prices are compared with the central bank's own inflation target. Unemployment and growth are compared with that country's last 10 years. If the latest reading falls within the middle half of those readings it is rated "in line", and the further outside it falls, the hotter or colder it is rated.
- Prices are headline consumer price inflation, the change over the last 12 months. Jobs is the unemployment rate, so low unemployment counts as hot (its bar runs the other way, so the number rises left to right). Growth is GDP growth on the previous quarter, after inflation and not annualised, so US figures look smaller than the annualised number usually quoted.
- Trend lines run from older readings on the left to the latest on the right, marked by a white dot. Hover, tap or focus a point for its date and value. Dates run along the bottom and percentage values up the left. Each chart uses its own scale and covers about a year; gaps mean missing observations. Higher means a higher reported number, including unemployment.
- Targets used: 2% for the US, euro area, UK, Japan, Norway and Sweden (within half a point of the target counts as in line), 1 to 3% for Canada and New Zealand, 2 to 3% for Australia and 0 to 2% for Switzerland. The Fed targets a slightly different measure of inflation (PCE) that usually runs a little lower than the CPI shown here.
- Timing: each figure is the latest published, so the dates differ between countries and indicators. Some are a few months old. Unemployment follows the international survey-based definition, so the Swiss figure is higher than the registered rate quoted locally.
- Interest rate: the central bank's main policy rate. For the US it is the upper end of the Fed's target range. "Usually" matters: central banks look at many things, and this is a summary, not a forecast. Not trading advice.
- Over time plots inflation against either growth or unemployment, one dot per quarter (growth) or per month (unemployment). The trail runs from the start of the chosen business cycle to now, with arrows showing the direction of travel. The centre of the chart is the inflation target and the country's 10-year median for growth or unemployment. Growth there is year on year, not on the previous quarter, because quarterly figures jump around too much to draw a readable path. Ringed dots are recessions: the official NBER dates for the US and, elsewhere, two or more quarters in a row of falling GDP. Hollow dots are off the scale and pinned to the edge; hover or tap one for its real value. The Textbook cycle button adds a dashed loop showing how a cycle runs in theory: recovery, boom, late cycle, downturn. It is a guide to the shape, not a forecast. The Past matches button (growth view only) marks the quarter in each past business cycle closest to today and adds a panel below the chart. It looks at growth and inflation together, counting only quarters when inflation was moving the same way as now. Each gap is scaled by how much that measure usually swings in that country, and a cycle that never came close gives no match. For each match it shows what the main stock index, the 10-year government bond yield and the currency did over the next 3 and 12 months.
- Sources: Bank for International Settlements, OECD and national statistics offices via FRED, Eurostat and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.