National income accounting is the traditional method used to judge the wealth and prosperity of a nation. GDP is the market value of all final goods and services produced in a nation during a given period of time. A continually growing per-capita GDP, adjusted forinflation, is seen as a sign of prosperity in traditional economic analysis. Students analyze the aggregate economic behavior of the United States economy by defining, calculating and explaining the significance of the unemployment rate, the number of new jobs created monthly, an inflation or deflation rate, and a rate of economic growth. Inflation is the rate of increase in the avergae price level for giids and services in the economy.
Inflation reduces the purchasing power of money.
The number of unemployed people is the number of adults without jobs that are seeking work. The labor force is the total number of employed and unemployed adults. The unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed people by the labor force and multiplying the result by 100. A low unemployment rate is seen as another sign of prosperity in traditional economic analysis, because it means that the economy is at near full production and most people have jobs. Macroeconomics simply tallies up the value of market transactions, yet macroeconomic performance defines the issues that policy makers work to address.