The FRED Blog has discussed the relationship between single-family housing starts and completions and also how changes in overall housing market prices are measured. Today we build on the topic of housing by comparing trends in the type of residential constructions erected.| FRED Blog
Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases data on total nonfarm employment in two forms: seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted.| fredblog.stlouisfed.org
The value of the US dollar can influence trade flows by changing the relative prices of exports and imports. A stronger dollar tends to make imports cheaper for Americans and US goods more expensive abroad, which can put upward pressure … Continue reading →| FRED Blog
Does it always feel like your flight is full? It makes sense that more people experience full flights because there are, by definition, fewer people on less-crowded flights. The other reason is that, yes, flights are indeed mostly full. Our … Continue reading →| FRED Blog
Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases data on total nonfarm employment in two forms: seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted. Seasonally adjusted (SA) employment data have had the effects of seasonal changes removed, such as the typical … Continue reading →| FRED Blog
The FRED Blog has discussed the dwindling supply of multifamily dwellings with 2 to 4 units. This trend even has its own name: the “missing middle.” Today, we tap into newly added data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia to offer additional insights into this segment of the housing market.| FRED Blog
Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases data on total nonfarm employment in two forms: seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted.| fredblog.stlouisfed.org
The FRED Blog has discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the participation of different groups of workers in the US labor force. Many workers in the later stages of their careers left the labor force, taking early retirement. This phenomenon … Continue reading →| FRED Blog
As students head back to school, families will once again open their wallets to buy school supplies. As many families budget for the school season, so do federal, state, and local governments. The FRED graph above shows the share of … Continue reading →| FRED Blog
The FRED Blog has discussed the growing economic footprint of the US nonprofit sector. Today, we dig deeper into this topic by answering two related questions: How is the economic footprint of the nonprofit sector measured? Our FRED graph above … Continue reading →| FRED Blog
The FRED Blog has discussed many aspects of the college experience: income and wealth gains from graduating college, how to pay for a college education using a 529 saving plan, and how the type of college experience impacts future earnings. Today we trace the … Continue reading →| FRED Blog
Inflation rates can vary quite a bit across the world, from hyperinflation to zero or even below zero. But is there anything systematic about these differences among countries?| FRED Blog
As economies develop from their agrarian roots into modern societies, they invariably go through a similar transition.| FRED Blog
The industrial production (IP) index is a popular metric of economic activity because it’s available relatively quickly. This monthly data series covers only a part of economic activity, however. In particular, it misses the service sector and the government sector. The graph above shows its evolution since 1972 along with a subcomponent that covers only manufacturing. Note that the index is set at 100 in 2012, meaning that all the indexes will always cross in 2012. A particularly healthy s...| FRED Blog
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FRED recently added two new personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index data series from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis: one excluding the energy and housing categories from the all-items PCE price index and a second one excluding the food, energy, and housing categories. These series are timely additions to FRED’s substantial repository of measures of trend inflation.| fredblog.stlouisfed.org
On July 19, 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the second quarter data for total nonfarm employees at the state and metro levels. At the state level, 36 states experienced positive job growth and 14 experienced job losses. Texas … Continue reading →| FRED Blog
Many households have been financially distressed during the COVID-19 pandemic, struggling to pay for necessities such as rent and groceries. It may seem surprising, then, that the aggregate personal saving rate has actually increased since the start of the pandemic.| FRED Blog
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Previous FRED Blog posts have discussed how to measure economic and financial uncertainty. Some measures are based on news coverage from a large set of U.S. newspapers, and others are calculated using the prices of financial derivatives. Today, we measure interest rate uncertainty based on daily financial data.| FRED Blog
Tariffs and trade policy have been in the news for months, so today we’re looking at how tariffs have changed over time and the role they play in generating revenue.| FRED Blog
Each quarter, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System releases the Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1 tables). They include data on transactions and levels of financial assets and liabilities, by sector and financial instrument; and full balance sheets, including net worth, for households and nonprofit organizations, nonfinancial corporate businesses, and nonfinancial noncorporate businesses.| FRED Blog
Disposable income and spending growth tend to follow similar long-term trends, as shown in our FRED graph above. Over the past 15 years, real disposable personal income growth and real personal consumption expenditures growth have averaged just over 2.5% year-over-year.| FRED Blog
Recent research has linked macroeconomic shocks with household financial distress. For instance, José Mustre-del-Río, Juan M. Sánchez, Ryan Mather, and Kartik Athreya show that regions with a higher share of credit card delinquency had more severe responses to macroeconomic shocks during the past two recessions. This post takes the topic a step further by exploring whether delinquency rates for households and businesses can help anticipate recessions.| fredblog.stlouisfed.org
In a previous FRED blog post, we discussed the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) released by the FOMC this past March. In this blog post, we will again use ALFRED, the vintage data version of FRED, to compare the latest projections released in June 2025 with several of the recent projections through 2027 for the following variables:| FRED Blog
Uncertainty surrounding trade policy can significantly affect International trade flows. Our first FRED graph, above, displays an index of trade policy uncertainty and the percent change in imports. The spike in uncertainty starting in late 2024 coincides with the spike in imports, suggesting that US importers preemptively accelerated their purchases as a precaution against anticipated tariff hikes or other trade disruptions.| fredblog.stlouisfed.org
St. Louis is the home of FRED and the FRED Blog and part of the Federal Reserve’s Eighth District. In the past few years, the housing markets in the seven states of our District have cooled and are slowly returning to their previous trend.| FRED Blog
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It’s different from mining and construction.| FRED Blog
Your credit report is a record of your credit history that includes information about your identity, outstanding balances and history of making payments, publicly available information, and inquiries made by organizations or individuals about your credit history. Your credit score is a number that reflects the information in your credit report. See this Consumer’s Guide from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to learn more about it.| FRED Blog
Analysts can use several economic indicators to gauge a country’s health. One is the infant mortality rate, which is the number of deaths of infants under the age of one per 1000 live births. The FRED map above shows this rate across the world in 1970.| FRED Blog
Between 2019 and 2024, consumer prices in the US increased by 26% and the average weekly earnings of all private-sector employees rose by 28%. In other words, average earnings across the country grew 2% faster than nationwide inflation.| FRED Blog
Every quarter, FOMC meeting participants submit their projections of key economic indicators. The committee releases the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP), containing the median, central tendency, and range of these projections:| FRED Blog
Employer-to-employer (EE) transitions are when workers move from one job to another without being unemployed in between. EE transitions are important for the aggregate economy for several reasons.| FRED Blog
Two of the largest financial assets for US households are pensions and direct holdings of stocks.| FRED Blog
The FRED Blog has discussed research on personal finance topics such as credit card debt, credit scores, and wealth accumulation. Our question today is: What has driven the changes in household debt since the 1990s?| FRED Blog
In past posts, we’ve looked at movement in household assets such as pensions and direct holdings of stocks and household liabilities such as home mortgages and consumer credit. Today, we look at how unexpected inflation can affect the value of these household assets and liabilities.| FRED Blog
The FRED Blog has discussed how the increased popularity of video streaming over the internet gradually decreased employment in video tape and disc rental establishments. Today we explore a related topic: how consuming news over the internet has reduced employment in the print media industry.| FRED Blog
In the most recent FOMC press conference, on June 12, Chair Powell noted that the labor market “has come into better balance, with continued strong job gains and a low unemployment rate.”| FRED Blog
Background| FRED Blog