St. Louis Fed's Economic Database FRED Turns 30

ST. LOUIS – FRED® (Federal Reserve Economic Data) turns 30 years old this month. The St. Louis Fed’s free economic database has been a signature offering since its inception in 1991.

When FRED launched, gasoline in the U.S. cost on average $1.08 per gallon, while median household income that year was $30,126.

Fast forward 30 years, and those same figures are $2.81 per gallon and $68,703 per household. A lot can change in three decades. FRED should know, as it houses close to 800,000 data series from over 100 sources worldwide.

FRED started as a dial-up electronic bulletin board featuring 30 data series. Today it boasts 6 million-plus users from around the world including economists, teachers, students, journalists and casual data enthusiasts.

Over time, the FRED team has worked to increase the hundreds of thousands of data series available to users to further promote data literacy and capability. Users can access popular series like:

• 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate
• 10-Year Treasury Constant Maturity Minus 2-Year Treasury Constant Maturity (a common yield spread)
• Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average
• Unemployment Rate

Users might also be interested in dashboards built by the FRED team to bundle data series:

• COVID-19 Economic Data Tracking
• COVID-19 Financial Conditions Dashboard
• Black or African American Economic Data
• Women’s Economic Data

Today’s 6 million-plus users enjoy not only FRED, but its extended family of services including:

• GeoFRED®, a geographical data mapping tool
• ALFRED®, which houses archived data from FRED featuring vintage releases
• FRASER®, a digital library with economic, financial and banking history including 5 million pages of digitized full-text items.

Learn more about FRED’s history in our blog post and how to use FRED online.