FRED has established a formal procedure to ensure the accurate publication of data from trusted sources: Only then are new data values added. After the FRED Team validates each new version (or vintage) of a data series released by a … Continue reading
FRED has multiple layers of checks to ensure the accurate publication of data from trusted sources. When data releases are added or updated, FRED validates the data against data already published by the same source. The Data Desk looks for … Continue reading
FRED is a data aggregator that enlists a data committee composed of St. Louis Fed economists, librarians, and information professionals to review content that may be added to FRED. Considerations include the data source’s methodology and reputation as well as … Continue reading
Note that because FRED uses levels and rounded data as published by the source, calculations of percentage changes and/or growth rates in some series may not be identical to those in the original releases. The following formulas are used: Change: … Continue reading
FRED uses business cycle turning points determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) for recession shading on graphs. Although recessions may end before the NBER determines the official end date, FRED graphs will continue to display shading for … Continue reading
Data values are calculated in the following order: (i) frequency aggregation (if any), (ii) units transformation (if any; e.g., percent change), and (iii) any formula you may have created (e.g., the formula “a – b” would find the difference between … Continue reading
When converting higher-frequency values to lower-frequency values, the average, sum, and end-of-period aggregation methods use the same number of decimal places as the original data. For example, the monthly values of 100.1 (Jan), 100.4 (Feb), and 100.9 (March) will be … Continue reading
It is possible for higher-frequency periods to overlap lower-frequency periods. For example, a week can start in one month and end in the next month. In these cases, FRED frequency aggregation will include the higher-frequency value in only one of … Continue reading
Except for the first and last observations, the average, sum, and end-of-period aggregation methods ignore any other missing values. For example, consider a daily series from 2003-06-01 to 2003-07-31 with a missing value for Friday 2000-07-04, the US Independence Day … Continue reading
Higher-frequency data may not be available for an entire lower-frequency period. For example, a monthly data series may end in February. With only 2 of the 12 months of the year available, the converted annual value will be missing for … Continue reading