trendEconDaily economic indicators from Google searches

Perceived economic situation ​

The trendEcon index tracks the perceived economic situation from how often people search for terms like Wirtschaftskrise, Kurzarbeit, arbeitslos and Insolvenz. More of these searches signal more worry, so the index falls when sentiment worsens. The sharp drop in spring 2020 is the clearest example. The series is daily, seasonally adjusted, and goes back to 2006.

Drag the slider below the chart to change the time range. Dashed lines mark a few macro events.

Perceived inflation ​

A second index follows searches about prices and the cost of living (inflation, Preise, Benzinpreis, Mietzins). It tends to react when inflation is on people's minds, such as the 2022 energy shock, the 2025 tariff announcements, and the oil-price jump around the US strikes on Iran.

See the other Swiss indicators for mobility, travel, cultural events and more.

News ​

• 2026: Daily updates are back. We rebuilt the data pipeline as a plain GitHub Actions job and replaced the old dashboard with this faster site. Every index runs through today.
• 2022: Our method was published in Economic Inquiry. Eichenauer, Indergand, Martínez and Sax, Obtaining consistent time series from Google Trends, 60(2), 694–705. The Background page summarises it.
• 2020: trendEcon on TV, an interview on RSI LA1.
• 2020: Covered in the Swiss press, including NZZ, Republik, the Tages-Anzeiger and Finanz und Wirtschaft.
• 2020: Awarded at the eRum2020::CovidR contest.
• 2020: Funded by the #versusvirus hackathon, one of 16 selected projects.
• 2020: The trendecon R package was released.