Now that we’ve made it through the election, it’s time to turn our focus back to economic metrics.

Each week in this column we speak about numbers. Employment reports, interest rates, factory orders, economic growth and so on. And these numbers are important with regard to our assessment of the economy. This year we have also been following other numbers. They are the numbers infected with COVID, hospitalizations, and those who have passed during the pandemic. These numbers have certainly had a profound effect upon the economic numbers.

Now we’re talking about another number -- the number of votes. The polls are now closed, and we just have to wait for the votes to be counted. Regardless of your choice, we hope you became one of those numbers by voting. However, we already know the winner. It is democracy. The fact that we have a choice is the strength of our country. And after all the votes are counted, we will be back to looking at economic and medical numbers.

We had a particularly important number last week with the release of the preliminary measure of economic growth for the third quarter. Subject to a revision, the partial bounce-back from a historically negative second quarter was expected, and we still have a long way to go. This week we will see another significant report. On Friday, the October jobs report will indicate if we are continuing to make progress in getting Americans back to work. Millions have already returned, but millions more need to get back to work. And hopefully now that the votes are counted, we can get focus on the most important number.