…the “non-farm payroll workers” number we’ll get on Friday, 20090807, relative to the USofA’s Economy, is *not* a lagging indicator, but a coincident indicator, as are trade sales and industrial production.

Employment is usually seen as a lagging indicator, meaning that it “lags” or is “delayed”, relatively to the true pace of economic activity. Think about it: when the Economy slows, people will only get fired AFTER the slow down is serious enough to justify such a measure; and when the Economy picks up, employment will take a while to sync…

This is intuitive, but data actually shows that the less general “non-farm payroll workers” number is coincident, hence its inclusion in the “index of coincident indicators”.