Federal Reserve Economic Data

The FRED® Blog

Are household debt and student debt exploding?

On the importance of properly deflating

The graph above shows two series related to household debt that have received a great deal of attention lately: consumer credit (mostly lines of credit and credit cards) and student loans. These series show stark increases especially in recent years. But one has to be careful before jumping to conclusions, as the eye may be deceived here. First, the student loans shown here are only those that come directly from the federal government, and that specific program was introduced in 1994. So part of the increase is simply this program ramping up. But more importantly, one has to consider the important factors for the time period shown here: overall prices increased, population grew, and real incomes increased as well. Thus, it could be that these graphs simply show the increases in these three factors and nothing else.

To make things clearer, we need to divide by a measure that also increases along with these three factors and thus represents the size of the economy over the years. One popular candidate for this is nominal (that is, not real) GDP. It accounts for price, population, and productivity growth. The graph below is the same as the above, except that both series are divided by nominal GDP. The new graph still shows an increase for both series, but it’s not as dramatic. It also has the advantage of providing a frame of reference for the numbers: Total outstanding consumer credit currently amounts to about 20% of national income, and student debt is 6%. Whether this is excessive is open to debate. But one should focus on the data in percentages, not in billions of dollars.

How these graphs were created: Search for “consumer credit” and click on the desired series. Once you have the graph, go to the “Edit Graph” section and open the “Add Line” panel. Search for “student loans” and take the series with a longer time range. Apply formula a/1000 so that the units match. You have now the first graph. For the second, add a series to each line by searching for “GDP” (do not take real GDP) and apply formulas a/b and a/b/1000, respectively.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

View on FRED, series used in this post: FGCCSAQ027S, GDP, HCCSDODNS

The house price tumble in pictures

FRED recently added county-level data on house prices. As with a lot of regional data, it’s best to look at it on our mapping tool, GeoFRED, which lets you visualize the distribution and the evolution of economic and socio-demographic statistics. One particularly interesting thing you can do with these new data is to replay the housing crisis of 2007-2008. The map shows the change in house prices that took place in 2006: The darker areas show the counties where growth was the highest, mostly the West and Florida. The maps below* show the change in 2007, when the West Coast and Florida were suddenly the areas with the lowest growth, and in 2008, when this downturn expanded to most of the West. If you go to GeoFRED, you can cycle through more years and see how crisis unfolded.

* Note that the colors in these maps denote lower values.

How these maps were created: The original post referenced interactive maps from our now discontinued GeoFRED site. The revised post provides replacement maps from FRED’s new mapping tool. To create FRED maps, go to the data series page in question and look for the green “VIEW MAP” button at the top right of the graph. See this post for instructions to edit a FRED map. Only series with a green map button can be mapped.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

Sectoral trends in activity

Exploring FRED release tables for GDP by industry

The graph above shows the value added to the U.S. economy for select industries since 2005. The period covers the run-up to the last recession, the recession itself (gray area), and the prolonged recovery since then. While a dozen years is a short economic history in which to see major sectoral changes, we can still see some here. A striking detail is that the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector was hit hard by the recession, but has since continued its upward trend. Construction, however, is still struggling to get closer to pre-recession levels, while manufacturing is almost there. Finally, the federal government registered a slight bump after the recession, while state and local governments are on a slow but continuous rise. FRED has much more on activity by sector, so feel free to explore from the handy release tables.

How this graph was created: Start from the release table for GDP by industry, choose which measure you want, then check the sectors and click “Add to Graph.”

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

View on FRED, series used in this post: RVAC, RVAF, RVAFIRL, RVAMA, RVASL


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