NPR.

This is the indicator from Planet Money, I'm Darien Woods.

And I'm Patty Hersch, just let me finish the set.

Wait, what are you doing, Patty?

I've got a podcast to make.

I'm just finishing a little workout here.

I know it's a little weird, but a gym is actually a great place to explain the metrics

that the Bureau of Economic Analysis uses to monitor growth.

You work out, Darien, don't you?

I've been to a gym probably a grand total of once in my life.

Well, now you may know what I'm talking about.

Hopefully some of our listeners do, and I say that most people who work out

use some very specific measurements to keep an eye on their physical growth.

For me, it's my weight and my muscle tone.

And for the United States of America, it's gross domestic product or GDP,

and gross domestic income or GDI.

Okay, I get where you're heading with this because usually these two metrics track each other very closely.

But at the moment, they are diverging quite sharply.

And that's because the government uses these metrics to determine how the economy is growing

and this whole divergence is throwing the Biden administration for a bit of a loop.

That's right. It's like, are we growing? Are we shrinking?

Are we getting more portly? Are we getting more emaciated? We don't know.

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