(FORTUNE Small Business) – Plenty of small businesses are hiring these days, but none of the owners I know are bringing on staff economists. Instead they are reduced to tracking economic trends the same way I do: scanning business sections, scrolling websites, and involuntarily monitoring the cellphone chatter of fellow commuters. Trouble is, the stuff we're told to track keeps changing. You might think, as I did, that the government's index of leading economic indicators would offer one-stop shopping. But Mark Zandi, the savvy chief economist at Economy.com, set me straight: "Those economic measures are released so late in the month," he sniffed, "that everybody has already digested what they mean."

In other words, following the government's indicators is so five minutes ago (insert eye-roll here)! The smart money, I'm told, now studies measures such as "final demand" (which comes after intermediate demand, in case you were wondering) and "economic income" (no, it is not the opposite of psychic income). Clearly, we've come a long way since we measured sunspot activity as a way of taking the planet's economic temperature. No one hopes to understand our economic fate by studying the position of the moon and the planets.

Well, hardly anyone. "I've investigated that, but I prefer not to share what I've learned," says Paul Macrae Montgomery, 62, an investment advisor based in Newport News, Va. McCrae has studied such now well-known indicators as hemlines (Up is good—think a man discovered that?) and magazine covers (By that measure "real estate is dead," says Peter Kendall, co-editor of The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast, a newsletter). As I spoke with professional economy watchers, I became encouraged that not only are indicators all around us, but some are simple enough for me to understand and even enjoy. Consider:

THE SNUFF INDEX Rising sales of so-called smokeless tobacco suggest that employment is increasing among even unskilled laborers—either that, or Major League Baseball is expanding to new cities. Not a helpful barometer for white-collar types, who consider it poor manners to spit too often during meetings.

THIGHS AND NAVELS Montgomery claims to have traced the relationship between hemlines and economic growth back about 200 years. When skirts are short, everyone is giddy and willing to take risks. "These cycles of excitation and quiescence are predictable," Montgomery declares. "It all relates to the electromagnetic field." Got that? The beauty of this indicator is that it enables economy watchers to thumb through women's catalogs at work.

BOXES AND BOXCARS Some folks study the corrugated-box business, on the theory that when manufacturers order more boxes, they're expecting to ship more goods. But from what I see , some of the boost in final demand for boxes is coming from former dot-commers and textile workers scrounging for shelter. Fed chairman Alan Greenspan loves to testify about "boxcar loadings," which sounds as if the government is tallying up the hobo population.

STOCKS AND SMILES Zandi advises paying attention to the share prices of a few bellwether companies: Cisco, Bank of America, Intel, and a mortgage firm or two. Kendall insists that certain stocks are "plugged very well into the social mood." On his list: Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and World Wrestling Entertainment. Or you can join Chicago consultant Sam Hill, who judges the social mood by the faces around him. "People don't smile as much when times are really tight," says Hill. The Grin Reaper index is easy to monitor but perhaps less reliable in an era of antidepressants and Botox. And anyway, I know that one won't work for me right now: It's the autumn of another baseball season, and I live in Boston.