St. Louis Fed Makes It Easier To Find Data

ST. LOUIS – The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has enhanced Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), its data aggregation tool, with a feature that will allow users to more easily find the available components of certain data releases.

Select data releases—about 30 to start, with more to be added gradually—can now be viewed the way the source presents the data. For example, users can now see the components of gross domestic product all on one page, just like on the website of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and then click from there to download or graph in FRED any combination of these components.  From that same page, users can jump to earlier data for the same components – some going back decades.

Among other data series to get this new “release view” treatment so far are the Consumer Price Index, labor force and unemployment rate, nonfarm payrolls and weekly selected interest rates. A full list of the releases with this new feature is available with the short tutorial. The list there will be updated as other releases receive the new feature. Email laura.e.girresch@stls.frb.org if you have a favorite release that you’d like to see in release view.

FRED is the St. Louis Fed’s signature economic database. It contains 238,000 frequently updated data series from 76 local, national and international sources. FRED imports data directly into graphs and spreadsheets, allowing users to easily compare data over periods of time and to include the graphs on websites, in print, in presentations or wherever else they are needed.

FRED is part of a family of FREE data tools that also includes GeoFRED for mapping and ALFRED for archival data. These resources have produced an unparalleled platform, one that is accessed regularly by people from almost every country in the world.