Global Leading Indicators

The Conference Board publishes leading, coincident, and lagging indexes designed to signal peaks and troughs in the business cycle for major economies around the world.

LEI for the Euro Area Declined in January

Latest Press Release

Updated: Tuesday, February 11, 2025

For Release 9:30 AM ET, February 11, 2025

Using the Composite Indexes: The Leading Economic Index (LEI) provides an early indication of significant turning points in the business cycle and where the economy is heading in the near term. The Coincident Economic Index (CEI) provides an indication of the current state of the economy. Additional details are below.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index^®(LEI) for the Euro Area declined by 0.5% in January 2025 to 97.1 (2016=100), following a decline of 0.6% in December 2024. As a result, the LEI contracted by 4.1% over the six-month period from July 2024 to January 2025, a faster rate of decline than the ?3.3% experienced over the previous six-month period between January and July 2024.

The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index^® (CEI) for the Euro Area inched up by 0.1% in January 2025 to 109.3 (2016=100), following no change in December 2024. Overall, the CEI grew by 0.6% over the six-month period from July 2024 to January 2025, three times faster than the 0.2% growth over the previous six months.

“The Euro Area LEI continued to fall in January” said Ian Hu, Economic Research Associate, at The Conference Board. “As in the previous month, all components, save the systemic stress indicator and stock prices, contributed to the decline of the LEI. Weak volume of orders books paired with depressed consumer confidence have weighed on the Index for the past 19 months and showed no sign of improvement in January. As such, the annual growth rate, despite becoming less negative in recent months, continues to suggest headwinds to economic growth in 2025 notwithstanding on-going monetary easing by the European Central Bank (ECB). After growing by 0.9% in 2024, The Conference Board projects the Euro Area’s real GDP to remain sluggish at about 1% in 2025.”

The next release is scheduled for Thursday, March 13, 2025, at 9:30 A.M. ET.

The Euro Area LEI decreased further in January

All non-financial components and the yield spread contributed to the decline in January

The negative six-month growth rate of the Euro Area LEI inched up but continued to signal recession risks

NOTE: The chart illustrates the so-called 3Ds—duration, depth, and diffusion—for interpreting a downward movement in the LEI. Duration refers to how long the decline has lasted. Depth denotes the size of decline. Duration and depth are measured by the rate of change of the index over the most recent six months. Diffusion is a measure of how widespread the decline is among the LEI’s component indicators—on a scale of 0 to 100, a six-month diffusion index reading below 50 indicates most components are weakening.

The 3Ds rule signals an impending recession when: 1) the six-month diffusion index lies below 50, shown by the black warning signal lines in the chart; and 2) the LEI’s six-month rate of decline falls below the threshold of −6.9 percent. The red recession signal lines indicate months when both criteria are met simultaneously—and thus that a recession is likely imminent or underway.

About The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) and Coincident Economic Index® (CEI) for the Euro Area

The composite economic indexes are key elements in an analytic system designed to signal peaks and troughs in the business cycle. Comprised of multiple independent indicators, the indexes are constructed to summarize and reveal common turning points in the economy in a clearer and more convincing manner than any individual component.

The CEI reflects current economic conditions and is highly correlated with real GDP. The LEI is a predictive tool that anticipates—or “leads”—turning points in the business cycle by around two months.

The eight components of Leading Economic Index® for the Euro Area are:

• ECB Minimum Bid Yield Spread
• Consumer Expectations of the General Economic Situation
• EURO STOXX® Price Index
• Markit® Manufacturing New Orders
• Markit® Business Expectations Index (Services)
• Volume of Order Books
• Index of Residential Building Permits
• Systemic Stress Composite Indicator

The four components of the Coincident Economic Index® for the Euro Area are:

• Industrial Production
• Employment
• Retail Sales
• Manufacturing Sales

To access data, please visit: https://data-central.conference-board.org/

About The Conference Board

The Conference Board is the member-driven think tank that delivers Trusted Insights for What’s Ahead^®. Founded in 1916, we are a non-partisan, not-for-profit entity holding 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt status in the United States. ConferenceBoard.org