The FRED^® Blog

The takeaway

When you hear commentary on the federal government’s financial situation, the information is often based on the money flowing into and out of the Treasury general account.

The US government’s checking account

As with any household or business, even the federal government needs an account to handle its bills and receive income from various sources. This account, provided by the Federal Reserve in its role as fiscal agent of the federal government, is called the Treasury general account. Our FRED graph above is updated with the account’s balance every Wednesday.

Reserves held at the Fed

The holdings of the Treasury general account are considered to be reserves at the Fed, equivalent to the reserves that banks hold there. The level of these balances in the general account was initially kept to a minimum to avoid interfering with Fed policy and the handling of reserve requirements. That changed in 2008 with the financial crisis, when it became routine for banks to hold excess reserves at the Fed and earn interest on them.

Since then, the Treasury general account has been holding considerable balances, at times over a trillion dollars.

There are also notable drawdowns on the balance. When new Treasury bonds are issued through the Fed at an auction, the proceeds land in the account. The balance gets reduced when Treasury bonds are bought back on the market, when the government issues stimulus checks, and when tax rebates turn out to be high.

When the balance gets close to zero, it’s often because a debt ceiling is approaching. At times like these, you often hear someone commenting that the federal government will run out of cash at some date. Such forecasts are made by looking at this account, its inflows, and its outflows.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Treasury general account.”

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

The takeaway

A new dataset in FRED provides the monthly probability the US economy is in recession. The latest data, for August 2026, show that probability was 0.08%.

The data

FRED has added probability estimates of the US economy being in recession. The dataset comes from RecessionRisk.com and was developed by economists Francesco Furno and Domenico Giannone. Our FRED graph above shows these monthly median probabilities since January 1980. Probability values range from 0% to 100%, where values closer to 100 indicate higher probability of recession.

Because the calculations incorporate timely indicators, these estimates are available on the first business day after the reference month closes. For example, the recession risk value for August 2026 (0.08%) became available on the first business day of September 2026.

The shaded areas in the graph represent the start and end dates of recessions reported by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee. This data visualization feature can be turned on and off in every FRED graph by following the steps described here.

The interpretation

The overlap between the RecessionRisk.com data and the NBER data is generally close. The timing of spikes in the estimated probability of recession broadly coincide with the dates announced by the NBER for turning points in the US business cycle from expansion to contraction. (That is, the occurrence of recessions.) However, several probability spikes, such as the ones around October 1998 and March 2023, did not develop into actual recessions.

The methodology

The probability estimates are calculated using a statistical model that combines two indicators. The first measures broad economic conditions, and the second measures financial market stress:

• Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for manufacturing, which is a survey of business conditions
• The Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress (CISS) reported by the European Central Bank, which tracks stress across bond, equity, money, foreign exchange, and financial intermediary markets

Details about the methodologies are available here.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Recession Probability for the United States, Median Estimate.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

In a previous FRED Blog post, we discussed the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) released by the FOMC this past June. In this blog post, we again use ALFRED to compare the latest set of projections released in September 2026 with several recent projections for the unemployment rate, core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation, real GDP growth, and the federal funds rate.

It is important to note that these projections represent neither a committee plan nor a binding decision on future policy.

Our first ALFRED graph, above, shows the median projection for the unemployment rate for the fourth quarters of 2026, 2027, 2028, and 2029. This latest set of projections is the first to include 2029, as every September the FOMC adds another year to the SEP. Most recently, as shown by the gold bar, the median FOMC participant projects that the unemployment rate will average 4.1% in Q4 2026 and remain at that level through Q4 2029. This is slightly below the median projections from June.

Our second graph shows the median projection for core PCE inflation over the same period. The median FOMC participant projects 3.4% core PCE inflation over 2026, with a return to the long-run inflation target of 2% by 2029.

Our third graph shows the median projections for real GDP growth. For 2026, real GDP growth was revised up from 2.2% in June to 2.3% in September, still shy of the 2.4% projected in March. The projection for real GDP growth in 2027 is slightly higher than it was in both March and June, revised up from 2.3% to 2.4%. Looking further ahead, the median projection for 2028 matches June’s result of 2.2% while the initial projection for 2029 stands at 2.1%, suggesting the Committee anticipates growth converging toward its longer-run trend of 2.0%

Our final graph shows the median participant’s projections of the federal funds rate. You may notice that the blue bar depicts the September 2025 vintage. This is because the SEP projections for the federal funds rate in December 2025 were exactly the same as the September 2025 vintage.

As of the September 2026 SEP, the median projection for the federal funds rate at the end of this year is 4.1%, where it remains in 2027 before falling to 3.9% by year-end 2028. These projections are higher than those in June by 0.3 percentage points this year and 0.5 percentage points in both 2027 and 2028. The fourth quarter projection for 2029 stands at 3.6%.

It’s worth noting that focusing on the median federal funds rate projection can obscure the dispersion of the individual participant projections. For example, projections for the 2029 year-end policy rate range from 2.9% 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. Change the dates to 2026-01-01 to 2029-01-01. For the other graphs, proceed similarly with “FOMC PCE core,” “FOMC GDP,” and “FOMC federal funds rate.”

Suggested by Rehann Silvanus and Kathleen Navin.