Just like most "facts" about the hobby, the MSM simply makes shit up. You would think that other vices like alcohol consumption and recreational drug use would be included as well. Oh well, it's their bogus study, not mine. I guess they can make their own rules.

A financial newsletter I subscribe to yesterday said the vice index is dropping back to 0 and headed towards negative numbers.  This index is supposedly the percentage of discretionary income that goes towards gambling and escorts. The gambling I can see how they can measure. But spending on hobbying? How the hell would they collect that data.

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Of course if one wanted to delude a segment of society that was already jobless, without college degree, 6 months or more unemployed or out of the general job market, and had even the most benign of criminal(or even arrest) record that there was an eager main-stream job market hungry for their skills one might promote the idea that the demand for hookers has dropped precipitously.
 
You and I know however that the aforementioned “one” would be spouting pure bullshit

"....according to Andrew Zatlin of South Bay Research. Zatlin's one-man research consultancy based out of California, whose highly accurate, data-driven methods of forecasting jobs numbers have earned the title of 'The Moneyball of Economics' by the Wall Street Journal.  

One of South Bay's products is the Vice Index, which according to Zatlin has an almost 90% statistical correlation with personal consumer spending and leads it by 4 months. The index measures spending on gambling and escorts, which, according to Zatlin, is a highly sensitive barometer for the 'wealth effect', or how rich we're feeling at any given time.  

Zatlin believes vice spending is more demographically and socio-economically representative. Only the 1% can buy a yacht, but spending on escorts can range from the very high end to "low-end", and can provide a geographically and socio-economically diverse set of data points.  

 
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/southbays-vice-index-leads-pce-2013-10#ixzz2jrU4Ldj