Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
With standard economic indicators arriving later and offering less clarity, researchers and analysts may need to consider turning to unconventional data sources to predict financial downturns.
Surprisingly, one of the most insightful predictors of economic change may lie in the sex work industry. Dubbed the “Stripper Index,” this innovative new economic model draws on data from escort pricing and trends in sex work to forecast economic contractions well before traditional indicators.
Is the Sex Industry a Telltale Sign of Recessions?
At first glance, the connection between the sex industry and the economy might seem unlikely. But spending on entertainment, luxury, and personal services has long served as a quiet warning sign of financial trouble.
When people grow uneasy about their income or job security, they tend to cut back on non-essential services first. The sex industry — made up of strippers, escorts, and similar work — is often one of the earliest places this becomes visible.
The Stripper Index data, based on average hourly escort rates and client spending patterns, shows a consistent trend. Spending in the sex industry starts to fall months before major economic downturns. These early declines offer a real-time look at changes in consumer behavior, sometimes long before official indicators, like GDP reports or stock market changes catch up.
Past data backs this up. Escort spending saw a drop ahead of the 2008 recession, again before the economic fallout of the 2020 pandemic, and also in the months leading up to the 2022 slowdown.
In each case, the sex industry showed signs of contraction before mainstream data confirmed the downturn.
Source: Erobella
This pattern also prompts questions about how changes in work and income are playing out beneath the surface. As more people take on gig work, contract roles, and informal employment — including in the sex industry — these lows and highs may offer new ways to understand financial stress across different parts of the labor force.
The stripper index, while unorthodox, may be one of the most direct ways to track how confident people feel in their earnings and stability — well before that anxiety shows up in headlines.
Why Does This Work?
Discretionary spending is highly sensitive to economic confidence. Services in the sex industry, often paid out-of-pocket and categorized as luxury or entertainment, tend to be among the first expenses consumers cut during financial uncertainty.
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Unlike investments or large purchases, which might respond to monetary policy with lag, spending on personal services reacts swiftly to changes in employment, wages, and consumer sentiment.
Implications for the Future of Work
The introduction of this index raises intriguing questions about the future of work and economic forecasting. As the gig economy expands and more individuals turn to freelance and independent work (including sex work), the spending patterns in these sectors could offer increasingly precise insights into economic trends.
This index challenges the stigma often associated with sex work by emphasizing its role as a vital economic signal. It also shows the importance of considering diverse data streams in understanding complex financial systems in an era of rapid change.
As work becomes more decentralized and driven by individual platforms, the boundaries of the labor force are changing. The sex industry, much like other forms of informal or gig-based labor, offers immediate feedback on consumer confidence and financial strain. Unlike customary employment data, which is often delayed or incomplete, spending behavior in this sector responds in real time to changing conditions—job losses, inflation, interest rate hikes, or larger uncertainty.
This kind of real-time visibility is especially valuable in a workforce where more people are earning income across multiple streams, often outside the formal economy. Whether it’s sex work, freelance design, food delivery, or OnlyFans, the growing patchwork of nontraditional employment creates gaps in how we currently measure economic health.
The Stripper Index begins to close one of those gaps, as it mirrors anxiety or optimism across a wider cross-section of independent earners. As economic models are updated to reflect the future of work, insights from industries like this one may become essential to understanding how people are actually coping, spending, and surviving.
