Economic indicators are a measure of economic activity for a certain country or region or asset classes. These indicators are measured, researched, and released by different entities. Some of these entities are government agencies and some are private research firms. Most of these are released on a schedule, known as an economic calendar. In addition, there is plenty of data available for past releases, expected releases, and actual releases. Each economic indicator captures different economic activity measures: some might affect housing prices, some show employment information, some affect grain, corn, and wheat instruments, others affect precious metals and energy commodities. For example, possibly the most well-known economic indicator, Nonfarm Payrolls in America, is a monthly indicator released by the US Department of Labor (https://www.bls.gov/ces/) that represents the number of new jobs created in all non-agricultural industries. This economic release has a huge impact on almost all asset classes. Another example is the EIA Crude Oil Stockpiles report, which is a weekly indicator released by the Energy Information Administration that measures change in the number of barrels of crude oil available. This is a high-impact release for energy products, oil, gas, and so on, but does not usually directly affect things such as stocks, and interest rates.

Now that we have an intuitive idea of what economic indicators are and what economic releases capture and signify, let's look at a short list of important US economic releases. We will not be covering the details of these releases here, but we encourage the reader to explore the economic indicators mentioned here as well as others in greater detail:

ADP Employment, API Crude, Balance of Trade, Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count, Business Optimism, Business Inventories, Case-Shiller, CB Consumer Confidence, CB Leading Index, Challenger Job Cuts, Chicago PMI, Construction Spending, Consumer Credit, Consumer Inflation Expectations, Durable Goods, EIA Crude, EIA Natural Gas, Empire State Manufacturing Index, Employment Cost Index, Factory Orders, Fed Beige Book, Fed Interest Rate Decision, Fed Press Conference, Fed Manufacturing Index, Fed National Activity, FOMC Economic Projections, FOMC Minutes, GDP, Home Sales, Housing Starts, House Price Index, Import Prices, Industrial Production, Inflation Rate, ISM Manufacturing, ISM Non-Manufacturing, ISM New York Index, Jobless Claims, JOLTs, Markit Composite PMI, Markit Manufacturing PMI, Michigan Consumer Sentiment, Mortgage Applications, NAHB Housing Market Index, Nonfarm Payrolls, Nonfarm Productivity, PCE, PPI, Personal Spending, Redbook, Retail Sales, Total Vehicle Sales, WASDE & Wholesale Inventories

More information about these releases is available at https://tradingeconomics.com/.