Data Releases with FRED

Compelling Question

How are official statistics assembled and released?

Description

The FRED^® online database provides access to more than 826,000 data series organized in more than 300 releases that look like the publications put out by the sources. This article describes to new data users how economic statistics are assembled and serves as a reference for advanced data users.

Introduction

Economic statistics are not the same thing as mathematics or bookkeeping. Official economic statistics are produced using scientific methods designed to measure broad concepts such as employment conditions and the cost of living. The value of those data resides in the fact that they are statistically valid and reliable representations of economic activity. Because official statistics are used to set economic policy, the sources of those data are accountable for their accuracy and responsible for reporting them at regular intervals. Other, non-official economic statistics are helpful for good decisionmaking but do not follow the same release policies or release calendars adopted for official statistics.

FRED users can access more than 826,000 national and international time series from both official and non-official data sources. All these data series are organized by source and then by release. Releases are groups of data that the source itself makes public. For example, monthly official economic statistics about the labor market are reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and made available the first Friday of each month via its Employment Situation Economic News Release. FRED organizes these BLS data on a webpage labeled “Employment Situation” and further sorts individual data series in more narrowly defined releases named and labeled after the corresponding BLS publications.

FRED users can search for data using different strategies. They can type keywords, the full name of the series, or the unique series identifiers in the search box at the center of the website’s landing page. FRED users can also browse the data by category, source, tag, or release. Let’s use the example of the BLS once again: Its official statistics about the unemployment rate are organized in tables in the release “Employment Situation > Current Population Survey (Household Data).”

This article describes the differences between official and non-official economic data releases currently available in FRED, drawing attention to the notes included below each graph. Those notes provide information about (1) the defining features of the data, which are known as metadata, and (2) some details about the process used to collect the data, which are known as paradata.

Official Statistics

Official statistics are reported by different types of government organizations. Those include independent statistical agencies and central banks. FRED is a data aggregator curated and supported by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRED is not a government organization, but it facilitates access to multiple national and international sources of official statistics.

According to the United Nations Fundamental Principles of National Official Statistics, data about economic conditions must be compiled scientifically and made available to the public so that everybody can make better decisions. Moreover, to facilitate the correct interpretation of those data, government organizations must also report about the methods used to produce those statistics.

In the United States, the Census Bureau is the principal official agency responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The U.S. Constitution provides the mandate for the statistical work of the Census. Besides its well-known 10-year population census, the organization also conducts a 5-year economic census and releases new data every year through its American Community Survey. The Census is the single largest source of data in FRED.

Figure 1: Population in St. Louis City, Missouri

SOURCE: Resident Population and Population Estimates in St. Louis City, MO, U.S. Census Bureau via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; accessed May 6, 2025.

Figure 1 above shows two different official measures of the number of people living in St. Louis City, Missouri, between 2009 and 2023. Both are reported by the U.S. Census Bureau but are part of different releases.

• The data for “Resident Population” (blue line) are reported in the Population and Housing Unit Estimates release. They are calculated by using figures from each decennial census and updating those with the annual figures of births, deaths, and migration.
• The data for “Population Estimates” (red line) are multiyear estimates from the American Community Survey. Those are “period” estimates derived from a data sample collected over five years, as opposed to “point-in-time” estimates such as those from past decennial censuses.

Because the methods used to report on the number of residents are different in each release, the figures themselves are not identical. A thoughtful data user should read the notes below each FRED graph and gather more information from the source’s website to better understand how the data were assembled.

Non-Official Statistics

FRED also facilitates access to economic statistics reported by academics and for-profit organizations. Although those statistics may seem very similar to the official data, the background and intended audience of the non-official data need to be carefully examined before making decisions based on them.

Sources of non-official statistics are not held to the same accountability standards as official sources of data. Their definitions of statistical validity and statistical reliability are also different. For example, the methodology used to collect data may not be fully disclosed; the publication frequency could be irregular; or there may be no stated policies for revising or correcting data. To learn more about data revision, read this Page One Economics article.

Figure 2: Job Openings and Job Postings

SOURCE: Job Postings on Indeed and Job Openings: Total Nonfarm, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Indeed.com via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; accessed May 6, 2025.

Figure 2 above shows the change in the number of job openings reported by the BLS (red line) and the change in the number of job postings reported by the company Indeed.com (blue line). Both series generally move in sync, and changes in job postings tend to reflect overall changes in job openings. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the BLS samples around 21,000 business establishments to produce its data and that Indeed.com doesn’t report the actual number of job postings listed on its website, as reported in this FRED Blog post. Moreover, in January 2021, Indeed.com changed its methodology for reporting job postings, thus requiring a new interpretation of their figures.

Figure 3: Real Gross Domestic Product in China

SOURCE: Real GDP at Constant National Prices and Real Gross Domestic Product for China, University of Groningen, University of California, Davis, and International Monetary Fund via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; accessed May 6, 2025.

Figure 3 above shows two versions of inflation-adjusted gross domestic product values for China. The blue line represents those values measured in U.S. dollars, reported by the University of Groningen and the University of California, Davis, as part of the Penn World Tables 10.01. The red line represents values measured in the Chinese domestic currency and reported by the International Monetary Fund as part of its International Financial Statistics. The metadata for each series notes the units, making the difference obvious. However, it’s also important to keep in mind that each data release follows a different methodology and speaks to different audiences. The Penn World Tables is an academic publication with an irregular publication calendar, and the International Financial Statistics are continuously updated, as reported in this World Bank publication (PDF).

Conclusion

The type of organization reporting economic statistics and the intended goals of those efforts must be taken into consideration when telling the story behind the numbers. Non-official data sources can offer unique perspectives on economic concepts measured through official statistics. They also often employ alternative statistical methods or tap into proprietary data sets.

Different organizations may release data series with almost identical titles or very similar descriptions. So, reading the metadata and paradata is an important part of understanding what the data represent.

To help users improve their data knowledge, FRED provides notes below each FRED graph that contain information from the data source’s website. These notes are the best starting point to learn more about the data. The amount of detail in those notes varies across data releases, reflecting the different communication policies and styles of the more than 100 sources of data in FRED. More information is always available by clicking on the name of the source listed next to the word “release.”

Acknowledgement

We thank Arthur Giesberts, World Bank Group, for sharing his presentation materials from the 2023 Beyond the Numbers Conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Any errors and omissions in this article are exclusively the author’s.