In early May, the FRED Blog described the Macro Snapshot—an interactive dashboard of important economic indicators available in FRED that St. Louis Fed economists and policymakers follow when analyzing the economy. As the economy changes, of course, the indicators worth following also change. So let’s look at some updates to the Macro Snapshot.
Some tabs have been added or reordered to emphasize recent economic events and improve user experience.
- Global prices for oil and other commodities, recently pushed up by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s frequent COVID lockdowns, can now be found in the “International” tab.
- Consumers’ year-ahead inflation expectations, increasing in the face of persistent inflation, are now included in the “Inflation” tab.
- Mortgage rates, rising alongside inflation expectations and the fed funds rate, are now in the “Financial Markets” tab.
The graph above is what appears in the Macro Snapshot itself, with some annotations:
- Users can still set a custom time range and remove series using the legend.
- But now each graph can be downloaded as an image, with a menu of choices for the type of image.
Such changes carry over to the downloaded image. The graph below shows how it looks when downloaded, with more annotations:
- Interactive elements—such as the time range button, series that were “clicked off” via the legend, and the export menu itself—are removed.
- Captions are optimized for a static image.
- A watermark in the top right corner reminds you where you got the graph!
You can check out all these changes yourself on the new and improved Macro Snapshot.
Suggested by Charles Gascon and Devin Werner.
