Introducing the Marketplace Dozen: For better or worse, most things are looking up

by CRAIG HELMSTETTER, MAYA CHARI and ELISABETH GAWTHROP

Every day on a radio near you, Marketplace does the numbers. And now there’s a digital home for them too.  

In conjunction with our colleagues at Marketplace, we just launched a dashboard of key economic indicators. Called “The Dozen,” it provides a quick read on the health of the economy.  

The next time you hear Kai Ryssdal mention the latest jobs report, or David Brancaccio mention yesterday’s stock closings, or Kimberly Adams mention the price of gas or eggs, you can now follow up at the Marketplace website to get more context on the latest data. 

Each of the 12 indicators update automatically as new data arrive. Right now, for example, the dashboard says that most things are trending up. In some cases that is a good thing for the economy. In others, not so much.

Here is a brief summary. Click on any of the links to dig into the data:

Workers, jobs & wages 

  • 🧑‍💼 Unemployment is up. Not historically high, but slightly higher than it has been for the past couple of years. 

  • 👷‍♀️ Jobs are up. The steady increase in number of jobs following the recession has become a slow but steady increase in recent months. 
    (This is one of those times when both unemployment and jobs are increasing. The number of people looking for work is growing a bit more quickly than the number of jobs.)

  • 💰 Wages are up. As of March, hourly pay was up by 3.8% annually. That increase outpaces the most recent reading on inflation. 

Inflation & cost of living 

  • 💸 PCE is up. As of February, this index of the prices that people pay for a wide variety of things was up by 2.5% annually. Generally, inflation seemed to be slowing – but we will get a new reading in just a few days. 

  • ⛽ Gasoline prices are down. As of March, they were down nearly 10% from the year prior. 

  • 🍳 Egg prices are up. Way up! Over 100% up over the past year, including an increase of 5.6% in the past month! 

  • 🏢 Rent is up. Average monthly rent tops $2,000 nationally according to Zillow’s latest data, and well over $3,000 in the New York metro. 

  • 🏠 Home sales prices are up. Nationally, the median rose to nearly $356,000 in March, up 5% year-over-year. 

Interest rates 

  • 🏘️ Home mortgage interest rates are up. According to Freddie Mac, the standard 30-year fixed-rate mortgage stands at 6.8% -- not quite the highest it has been this century (8.6% in May 2000), but notably higher than the 2010s through the early 2020s. 

Broader economy 

  • 🏭 Gross domestic product is up. GDP increased by just over 5% over the course of 2024. We’ll see what the first quarter 2025 looked like at the end of this month.

  • 📈 The stock market is… mixed? Volatile! Up yesterday. But down month-over-month. But up year-over-year. New reading tonight. And then Monday. And then the next day… 

We hope that you learn as much from The Dozen as we already have, and we hope that it becomes a resource that you bookmark and return to when you want to dig in more than a quick sound bite might allow.  

PS. Pro-tip. All of the indicators start with a table. But don’t miss the arrow in the grey bar on top. Clicking on it will reveal more goodies, like longer trendlines, comparisons of different sectors (while most jobs are up, not so much for federal jobs), and sometimes even data for where you live (a gallon of gas is $480 in San Fransico, but only $2.65 in Houston). 
 
Enjoy. And let us know what you think. 

Thanks to our Marketplace co-conspirators on this project: Olga Oksman, Dylan Miettinen, Virginia Smith, Carrie Barber and Francesca Levy. The idea originated with Marketplace’s General Manager, Neal Scarbrough. The project is supported in part by Arizona State University’s Ten Across initiative.

Craig Helmstetter