One good economic number to watch is “workweek labor hours”. This points to what people are working on average for a week. 

Here’s what Robert Wenzel at EPJ reported last week:

And for the first time since January, the workweek moved higher, up 1 tenth to 34.5 hours.

Important considering all the economic glory the President is bestowing on himself as of late for legacy reasons. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows this ten year graph.

Same working hours as George Bush’s tenure. One reason Obama’s stunted economic growth is due to his own policies like Obamacare forcing more part time growth then full time. Here’s a snippet from “Monthly Labor Review” in 2000 explaining low hourly growth even though the workforce is growing:

When companies begin to employ more part-time workers while holding on to their full-time workforce, the average weekly hours total falls as the number ofworkers increases at a faster rate than does the figure for total hours.