Short for Federal Reserve Economic Data, FRED is an online database consisting of thousands of economic data time series from national, international, public, and private sources. Created and maintained by the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED goes far beyond simply providing data: It combines data with a powerful mix of tools, new and old, that help the user understand, interact with, display, and disseminate the data.
For example, FRED now features new graphs. They are visually more appealing, and also have new capabilities. Users can share graphs easily, embed a graph into a blog, and also now create stacked graphs. If you are interested in seeing it in action, here’s an example of a stacked graph of the components of
GDP (GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government + Net Exports).
FRED also has user dashboards. When a user creates an account in FRED, s/he may also create a dashboard of personally selected data. Users can create multiple dashboards, and they may be open to the public or kept private.
US Economic Indicators is an example of a public dashboard.
Last, but not least,
FRED now has a blog. It will have posts about twice a week, and will highlight interesting data and FRED graph features. It’s a great way to keep up on the latest features and data in FRED.
If you haven’t visited FRED recently (or ever), go take a look–you’ll be glad you did!
