Men's Underwear Index
Greenspan's off-the-books leading indicator. Men stop replacing underwear before they stop spending everywhere else.
Alan Greenspan allegedly tracked men's underwear sales as an informal leading indicator throughout his tenure at the Federal Reserve. The theory: underwear is an infrequent, private purchase with no social signaling value. When men begin skipping replacement cycles, it signals genuine household budget tightening before that signal appears in more prominent consumer spending datasets. The NPD Group has periodically validated the correlation, and the metric resurfaced in mainstream financial media during the 2007–2008 contraction.
YoY unit sales change in men's underwear and basic apparel category, sourced from NPD Group retail panel data. Cross-referenced with BLS consumer expenditure survey data on clothing and footwear. Negative readings have historically preceded broader consumption softening by 1–3 quarters.