Furman does an excellent job on how to look at and interpret macro data here: http://www.milkenreview.org/articles/extracting-the-signal-from-the-noise-7-tips-for-interpreting-macroeconomic-data
Here is a simple summary, but do read the whole thing:
“But all of this has a simple bottom line: when assessing the overall health of the economy, never read too much into a single data snapshot. Rely, instead, on data series over substantial periods and in the context of what other data suggest is happening.”
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