Six key variables
You can get a very good idea of the pulse of economic activity by looking at only six key economic variables: six variables that together give a very large chunk of the significant information about the macroeconomy. These six variables are:
Real Gross Domestic Product
The unemployment rate
The inflation rate
The interest rate
The level of the stock market
The exchange rate.
Real GDP
The first key quantity is the level of real Gross Domestic Product, called "real GDP" for short, and often referred to as just "GDP."
Let's unpack the definition of real GDP word-by-word.
R…
