Compare indicators
Each line rebased to 100 where the shared window begins — growth from a common base, not levels.
Each series rebased to 100 at Oct 1951. mortgage_debt, productivity · read from cache, latest-revised.
- Mortgage Debt
Home-mortgage debt outstanding, the biggest household liability.
Home-mortgage debt outstanding for US households and nonprofits (Fed Z.1).
- Labor Productivity
Output produced per hour worked, as an index.
Nonfarm business sector real output per hour of all persons, indexed to 2017=100.
Each measured on its own terms — compare the lenses, not just the lines. Full lessons → Learn
…and that proves nothing. Two lines moving together is not one moving the other. Almost any pair of trending economic series correlates highly — they share the same long climb of growth, prices, and population, or it is chance. r measures co-movement over this exact window, never cause. Change the range or swap a series and watch r move. Why correlation isn’t causation →