Meaning of clock icon in VS Code source control

What does it mean when a blue clock icon is displayed over the VS Code source control icon? When I run the git status command, I get the message: "nothing to commit, working tree clean." I checked the VS Studio documentation, but I couldn't find anything on this topic.

The clock is the "Progress Badge" which is visible while VS Code is getting repository info and status:

You can disable it in settings:

{ 
  // controls whether git actions should show progress
  "git.showProgress": true
}