From the Federal Reserve to the Bureau of Economic Analysis to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are a variety of free federal sources journalists can turn to for high-quality data on the U.S. economy.
While these will be most relevant to business reporters, economic issues cut across beats, so journalists covering almost any topic may find these useful. Most data featured here is macroeconomic, meaning it indicates the health of the national economy, or segments of it.
Below, we spotlight 8 data sources reporters should know and use, including several Federal Reserve regional banks. Many sources offer much more information than can be covered here, so think of this tip sheet as a starting point. We’ll update this list periodically, so be sure to bookmark it and share it with your colleagues. And feel free to reach out if there’s anything you think should be added.
1. Federal Reserve Economic Data — FRED
The U.S. central banking system, the Federal Reserve, is a data-heavy organization. Economists at the bank regularly crunch numbers to inform national decisions, such as setting target interest rates.
Meanwhile, economists at the Federal Reserve’s district banks — there are 12 across the country — analyze local and regional data to provide research insights on specialized topics, such as economic inequality.
FRED, maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, is a one-stop repository with hundreds of thousands of nationwide datasets. There’s useful information for reporters across beats — for example, data on total public education spending nationwide since the late 1950s.
One of the most powerful elements of FRED is that you can adjust the data output for more context.
For the education spending data, click the “edit graph” button and choose “percent change from a year ago.”
You’ll immediately see that while there is much more government spending on education in recent years than decades ago, the percent change in education spending year to year shows a downward trend since the 1980s. You can also download the underlying data and embed and share the generated graphs.
2. Bureau of Economic Analysis
The BEA is a primary source for a range of data on the nation’s overall economic health, including gross domestic product, the granddaddy of macroeconomic indicators. Broadly, GDP is the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S.
You can also find GDP by industry, state, county or metropolitan area via BEA. GDP data can tell you which regions and industries are growing or shrinking, and how the growth of the overall U.S. economy compares with other countries.
There is a lot of other data to explore, including on international investments and trade, taxes and spending across all levels of government, assets such as machines and software that U.S. companies own, along with much more national data. Reach out to the BEA press office with questions about how specific datasets are compiled and what they can and can’t tell you.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index is another BEA dataset to know and use. It captures changes in the prices of goods and services — in other words, it’s a measure of inflation. Core PCE, which excludes food and energy prices because those tend to fluctuate more than other categories, is the inflation measure the Federal Reserve uses to inform its decisions about interest rates.
Another common measure of inflation often reported in the news media is the Consumer Price Index, produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Consumer Price Index is the inflation measure that has made headlines in recent years amid rising prices during the 2020s compared with low inflation during the 2010s.
CPI is based on the prices consumers pay for a sampling of goods. Check the news releases that accompany each monthly publication of CPI to learn what’s driving inflation — in November 2024, for example, housing accounted for 40% of the increase.
The Producer Price Index captures prices producers receive for many goods and services — and also accounts for prices producers pay for inputs, among other things. Inputs are things needed to make a good or provide a service. For example, the stainless steel used to make a washing machine is an input. PPI can (though not always) be read as a future indicator of CPI, as Nancy Marshall-Genzer of American Public Media’s Marketplace reported in February. If the prices producers pay for inputs rises, they’ll often try to pass those costs onto consumers, which later show up in CPI.
Another BLS dataset that gets a lot of media love is the jobs report, formally known as the Employment Situation Summary, which shows how many jobs were added in the past month as well as the overall unemployment rate. There are also state and local unemployment data from the BLS. Note that employment data that is seasonally adjusted to account for regular hiring bumps, such as around the winter holidays, are subject to revision up to five years after they are released.
Since the BLS is the federal agency tasked with producing data related to labor and work, it’s no surprise they produce a tremendous amount of economic data. The three datasets mentioned here hardly scratch the surface. Their release calendar is here. Use their data retrieval tools to find what you need.
The BLS also produces several national longitudinal surveys that follow the economic outcomes of U.S. adults over time. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics at the University of Michigan is another long-running panel that illuminates the economic outcomes of Americans over time.
While the BLS will have most of the labor market stats you’re looking for, its umbrella agency, the U.S. Department of Labor, is your go-to for data on unemployment insurance.
While the Census Bureau is best known for its every-ten-years count of the U.S. population, it also regularly conducts surveys and produces data.
The Center for Economic Studies at the Census Bureau produces several publicly available datasets that journalists can use to provide context on the nation’s overall economic health. One of them is Business Dynamic Statistics, with recent and historical data on business startups and shutdowns, along with job creation and other measures.
Other potentially useful information from the CES include data on race and economic opportunity, employment of U.S. Army veterans post-discharge and how early childhood factors such as parental income affect earnings later in life.
The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series out of the University of Minnesota standardizes Census Bureau data, allowing for comparisons of economic and social trends over time.
In addition to data produced or maintained by Federal Reserve regional banks, the central Federal Reserve is another data source to know. And while the Census Bureau often focuses on economics through the lens of demographics, think of data from the Federal Reserve as being much more numbers-driven.
One such dataset is the assets and liabilities of U.S. commercial banks, a quarterly tally across banks of things that add to balance sheets, such as loans, and things that subtract from balance sheets, such as deposits. You can see some interesting trends in this data, such as deposits increasing threefold during the first year of the COVID pandemic as widespread retail and restaurant shutdowns pushed money into savings. Another is the financial accounts of the U.S., which offers aggregate figures on assets, liabilities and net worth of households and nonprofit organizations back to the early 1950s.
The consumer credit data series is also one to watch. Information is released quarterly and includes the types of outstanding credit — such as car loans and credit cards — along with major credit holders — such as banks, educational institutions and credit unions.
GDP is powered by consumer spending so it’s no wonder the Federal Reserve regional banks put a lot of effort producing data on consumer habits.
Researchers at the Consumer Finance Institute, a signature initiative of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, produce a variety of economic reports and working papers and can help journalists answer questions about how Americans spend, save and finance home purchases, education and other types of credit.
7. Sticky-Price Consumer Price Index
Another Federal Reserve regional bank data product, sticky-price CPI is produced by the Atlanta Fed. “Sticky” prices are prices that do not rapidly change. Goods that have sticky prices change price slowly in response to economic conditions, such as an increase or decrease in demand, or changes in input prices. Put another way, sticky prices are less volatile than flexible prices, which sellers can adjust relatively quickly in response to market changes.
Vehicle fuel is an example of a good with a price that is flexible, or more volatile, and can change rapidly. Economists have found restaurant food, education and public transportation are examples of goods with sticky prices — they don’t change quickly.
Technology changes can sometimes turn formerly sticky prices into flexible ones. The widespread adoption of the internet in the 2000s, for example, afforded some sellers the ability to change their prices with a keystroke. Many retailers used to sell goods through printed catalogs sent to consumers’ homes. Changing prices in catalogs was expensive, given the high costs of printing and shipping. The internet (mostly) killed the catalog, allowing many sellers to reach consumers directly — and to change prices at will.
“Importantly, the sticky-price measure seems to contain a component of inflation expectations, and that component may be useful when trying to discern where inflation is heading,” according to a 2010 Economic Commentary from Federal Reserve economists. That’s because sellers of sticky-price goods want to factor in inflation expectations well ahead of time, since it’s relatively difficult for them to adjust prices.
So, sticky price data is something journalists should understand and keep an eye on as a potential inflation indicator.
Also note that higher-income households tend to consume more sticky-price goods, according to an April 2020 paper in the Journal of Monetary Economics, while lower-income households tend to consume goods with more price volatility.
8. Center for Inflation Research
Digging deep into inflation trends? Check out the reports and data from the Center for Inflation Research from the Cleveland Fed. The Survey of Firms’ Inflation Expectations is a glimpse into what executives at manufacturing and service sector firms think about where inflation is headed in the coming year.
There’s also median PCE and median CPI, in which analysts remove outliers from those measures. By removing outliers, the idea is to “provide a better signal of the underlying inflation trend,” according to the Cleveland Fed.
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