Monthly
Index (no units)
1985 - 2026
Jan 1, 1985 to Feb 1, 2026
FRED
2 months ago
StaleMar 4, 2026
Assessing the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is essential for policymakers, but challenging because the crisis has unfolded with extreme speed. We identify three indicators: stock market volatility, newspaper-based economic uncertainty, and subjective uncertainty in business expectation surveys that provide real-time forward-looking uncertainty measures. We use these indicators to document and quantify the enormous increase in economic uncertainty in the past several weeks. For more information, see Baker, Scott, Nicholas Bloom and Steven Davis (2020), 'COVID-INDUCED ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY' (http://www.policyuncertainty.com/media/COVID-Induced%20Economic%20Uncertainty.pdf)
As of February 1, 2026 • Monthly data • Source: FRED
This dataset contains 494 monthly observations, over 41 years, 1 months, updated monthly from FRED. View Methodology
Data Points
494
Coverage
41 years, 1 months
Updates
monthly