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Data

Data is the linchpin of this blog. But where does it all come from? Here are the primary sources I use to gather data and create charts.

FRED

The FRED database is maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and it's absolutely the first place to look for economic data. You'll find data for inflation, employment, interest rates, GDP, and far more here.

This is a typical chart from FRED. You can add multiple series to a single chart.

FRED has pros and cons. Its biggest drawback is that it provides no help in finding what you want. If you want to know, for example, the percent of the population with a job, you'd better know that it's called the "Employment Population Ratio." Or maybe you need the "Labor Force Participation Ratio." Or maybe the "Employment Rate." FRED won't give you a hint. If you're not sure what something is called, you're out of luck. All you can do is muck around and look for something promising. (Of course, your better bet is to use Google to try and find the right term, and then use FRED to look it up.)

FRED's biggest advantage, aside from its vast range of data, is that once you learn the basics it's really easy to use. What's more, all the data is kept in the same convenient format, so once you learn how to use it for one thing you can use it for anything else. FRED creates charts by default, but you can also download the data to Excel and create your own.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Most of the basic BLS data is available via FRED, but the BLS site contains an interactive mode that allows you to break down data in different ways. (Note: If you plan to download the data to Excel, be sure to go to "More Formatting Options" and switch to Column Format.)

Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve maintains the US national accounts. This is not for the faint of heart and is generally useful only to people who are pretty familiar with the underlying data. Still, you might want to take a look.

Eurostat, OECD, World Bank

Although FRED contains data for foreign countries, it's often sparse. For European data, try Eurostat. It is legendarily hard to use, but sometimes it's the only source for data you need. For world data, the best sources are the OECD and the World Bank.

Trade

FRED doesn't include trade data. Data for trade in goods is maintained by the Census Bureau, and their site includes a vast amount of detail. This is great, but it also makes it a huge pain in the ass to use.

Data for total trade in goods and services is maintained by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Income

The basic place to get cash income figures is the Census Bureau. They maintain historical income figures for people, families, and households, both in nominal and real (inflation adjusted) terms. Some of the series go back only to 1970 or so, while others go back as far as 1954.

Cash income is not total income, and there are many places that try to estimate total income (which includes welfare benefits, capital gains, etc.). The best source for this is probably the Congressional Budget Office, though you'll have to comb through various reports to find it.

Surveys

There are various sources for historical survey data on everyday issues. One of the best is the General Social Survey, which has been conducted every two years since 1972. They've asked a wide variety of questions on political and cultural topics, and you can break them out by gender, race, education, etc. The presentation is a bit of a pain, and downloading data is even more of a pain. But it's still good stuff.

Another good general source for survey data is Pew Research. There's no specific site that brings all their data together, so your best bet is just to google for what you want or else go to the main site and rummage around.

Gallup, of course, is also a good source for long-term historical survey data. Our World in Data, a relative newcomer, has a huge array of global information, all presented in nice interactive formats.

Release Schedules

Every federal agency that routinely releases data also publishes a calendar with monthly and quarterly release dates. Here are a few:

  • BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
  • BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis)
  • Census Bureau (economic data)
  • USDA (Department of Agriculture)
  • EIA (Energy Information Administration)
  • BTS (Bureau of Transportation Statistics)
Miscellaneous