Top 7 Recession Indicators According To HuffPosters (SLIDESHOW)

Last week HuffPost featured its "Top Ten Unconventional Indicators Of The Recession," such as sales in men's underwear and movie rentals. We asked you to suggest your own economic indicators, and you didn't disappoint.

Mark Voegele, who works in the mobile phone industry, hypothesized that families lean on one another during a recession. He suggests a Family Plan Index and says he has seen an increase in mobile phones added to family billing plans, even by families members who live far away from each other.

HuffPost blogger Henry Blodget suggested a Latte Index. Though some may argue that their daily Starbucks fix has moved from discretionary spending to a daily necessity, he argues that the economy can be accurately measured by sales of a cup o' joe. Starbucks reported a 6% drop in established store sales in the third quarter of 2009; they compensated by closing stores and cutting back.

Vote on your favorite HuffPost-submitted indexes by deciding which ingenious measurements are legit freakonomics and which are just weakonomics. And suggest your own recession indicators in the comment section below.

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Hemline Index

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Vote and Share Choose Your Top 5 Weakonomics Freakonomics! Now Make Your Own Top 5 And Share with Your Friends RANK: AVERAGE:  OUT OF 10 Huff Post reader Disabled-GMG3 reminded us of the "short skirt index," more commonly known as the Hemline Index, which traces its roots back to 1926, when economist George Taylor proposed that hemlines rise as stock prices rise. The theory was first affirmed in 1929, when skirt lengths dropped almost overnight after the Wall Street crash. But Huff Post reader Artos suggest we rethink the theory: "Considering that Women are actually in possession of more of the jobs of late, I wonder if that remains true."

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Comments

[cygnus workstation]

at the end of the day it's the middle class that gets scr3wed through inflation' loss of jobs/job security and stagnant wages- a trend that has persisted for decades with the advent of so called 'reagan0mics'

hat tip to http://www.iamned.com

[Okieborn]

I have a recession indicator !!
I have lost my home , my unemployment has just ran out and the car dealership just came after my car and had to sell my girl friends engagement ring to buy her lunch .

[TheDarkKnight]

Huffington Post,

Can you tell me where you got the hemline photo. I've been searching but without success. I'm hoping to locate it in a larger size.

Thank you.

[msbeal]

Man, that gal has some spectacular legs.

[themodernleader]

The Forgotten American index is a glaring omission. The phase speaks for itself.
There is also an Invisible American index of the Denied-Existence Citizens who live forever on the public dole or prey on those citizens on the public dole. These are Invisible Americans.

[joebaggadonuts]

A tent city surface area index would serve well in quantifying the metrics you suggest. One could also use prison occupancy rates and raw numbers of humans housed in prisons to round it out a bit. They have really messed up the dole by kicking people off after a certain time, so you cannot track the people dropped off the dole once that happens to them. Food stamps though might serve as a metric, as in dollar value of food stamps redeemed.

[raymurt]

I see England! I see France!

[TheDarkKnight]

LOL!

[PollyTics]

These days, skirt lengths are all over the place (and I like it). So I can only assume that if the lengths are not consistent, then the theory about skirt lengths is also "out of date".

[TheDarkKnight]

Excellent point.

[Egghead]

The hemline index is out of date. It originally had to do with the expense of silk stockings, which are easily damaged and expensive to replace. Long skirts mean the wearer can get away with damaged stockings.

[Artos]

Ummmmm, As to the skirt length theory, did you mean to say dropped or were raised. I thought Skirt lengths went down when women felt a measure of security and up when not. The idea being that only during bad times would it be a necessity to attract a mate for purposes of security. My thought was that because stats have shown that more men are losing their jobs as opposed to women that women were less inclined to need a mate therefore needed to use short skirts as attraction, less.

[bluguy8]

the hem line thing is off-- best selling dresses are maxi's--so there goes that theory