Every December, retailers hire a large number of extra workers to keep up with holiday demand. Our FRED graph above shows a clear seasonal spike in the number of retail employees at the end of the year, as stores bring on temporary and part-time workers to stock shelves, run registers, and load presents. Hiring picks up in November, peaks in December, and then falls once the holidays are over.

Our second FRED graph shows average hourly earnings for retail workers. Even though more “elves” are on the job than at any other time of year, average hourly earnings in retail often dip a bit in December. That doesn’t necessarily mean these workers are getting a pay cut. It’s likely that holiday hiring brings in seasonal workers who tend to earn lower wages than permanent, full-time staff. So, when you average all workers in December, the seasonal workers bring the average wage down.

How these graphs were created: For the first graph, search FRED for “All Employees, Retail Trade” and select the Monthly, Thousands of Persons, Not Seasonally Adjusted series. For the second graph, search FRED for “All Employees, Retail Trade” and select the Monthly, Dollars per Hour, Not Seasonally Adjusted series. Finally, start the sample period on 2020-11-01 for both graphs.

Suggested by Bill Dupor and Melanie LeTourneau.

Our FRED graph above shows one of the all-star statistics for the US economy: industrial production. It’s a compelling data series for at least two reasons.

• It measures something people can relate to—the production of tangible stuff.
• The data are relatively easy to collect, so this series has been available continuously for over a century.

But the real reason we’re highlighting this data series today is that it’s a favorite of George Essig, especially when he’s testing enhancements in FRED.

A note of gratitude and recognition, on the retirement of George Essig

FRED wouldn’t be what it is today without George Essig. He joined the St. Louis Fed Research Division as a research associate and soon began working full-time on FRED. Over the past 25 years, George has made countless insightful and meaningful contributions to FRED, making it the world-class data service that it is today.

• George started working on FRED because he thought it would be useful to people, but he never imagined that it would become such a big deal.
• Right from start, he engineered FRED to be scalable.
• He has scrapped new developments right before deployment, because he found a better way of doing things.
• He moved FRED’s collection of plain text files into a proper database.
• He decided that each series should have its own web page, instead of only listing data in tables.
• He built an independent, dynamic website for FRED, to accommodate expanded features, including all its popular graphing capabilities.
• He made it possible to increase FRED from a few hundred time series to almost 1 million.

We wish George Essig all the best! We will continue to take good care of FRED as he enjoys his well-earned retirement.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “industrial production.”

Suggested by the FRED Team.

In a previous FRED blog post, we discussed the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) released by the FOMC this past September. In this post, we  again use ALFRED to compare the latest projections released in December 2025 with several of the recent projections for the unemployment rate, core PCEPI inflation, real GDP growth, and the federal funds rate. Note that these projections represent neither a committee plan nor a decision on future policy.

Our first ALFRED graph, above, shows the unemployment rate projections for the fourth quarters of 2025, 2026, 2027, and 2028 according to the four most recent SEPs. Every September the FOMC adds another year to the projections. Most recently, as shown by the blue bar, the median FOMC participant projects that the unemployment rate will average 4.5% in Q4 2025 and drop to 4.4% by Q4 2026 and 4.2% by Q4 2027. This path is largely unchanged from the September projection.

Our second graph, above, shows the core inflation rate projections for the same years. The median FOMC participant projects 2.5% inflation over 2026, which is slightly lower than the 2.6% projection in September. Median projections for 2027 and 2028 were unchanged.

Our third graph, below, shows the median projections for real GDP growth. Growth projections for 2025 have been revised upward since September, from 1.6% to 1.7%. Growth projections for 2026 are notably higher than they were in September, revised upward from 1.8% to 2.3%. As Chair Powell noted during the press conference, the apparent boost to growth in 2026 is partially due to the effects of the government shutdown shifting about 0.2% of GDP growth from late 2025 into early 2026.

Our final graph, below, shows the median participant’s projections of the federal funds rate. The December median projections over the forecast horizon were from their September values. As a result, there is no December vintage in ALFRED. It is worth noting that, although the median projections were unchanged, the forecasts of individual participants were revised. For example, in the September projections, participants’ forecasts for the end of 2025 ranged from 2.9% to 4.4%, while the range narrowed to 3.4% to 3.9% in the December projections. The median projection for the policy rate at the end of 2026 was unchanged between September and December, at 3.4%. The range of projections widened from a range of 2.6% to 3.9% to a range of 2.1% to 3.9%. The range of projections for 2027 was unchanged, at 2.4% to 3.9%.

How these graphs were created: Search ALFRED for “FOMC unemployment” and take the median projection. Click on “Edit Graph,” choose a bar graph, and add three bars with the same series again. Finally, select the proper vintage for each bar. For the other three graphs, proceed similarly with “FOMC Consumption,” “FOMC Growth,” and “FOMC Fed Funds Rate.”

Suggested by John Fuller and Charles Gascon.