You may know how many people live in your hometown. You may even have a good idea about the population of your state and the US as a whole. But do you know how many people live in your Federal Reserve District? No? Well, today is your lucky day…

FRED hosts numerous series associated with each Federal Reserve Bank’s District. Many of these series relate to each District’s balance sheet, such as its asset holdings and liabilities. But there are other tidbits in FRED, such as the population of each District.

Even cooler than that is the fact that FRED also has maps. Lots of maps. FRED provides you the ability to map regional data with a push of a button. The FRED map above gives one example associated with each District’s population through 2023. Not surprisingly, given the size of its District, the San Francisco Fed has the largest population, at roughly 69 million. The smallest population is associated with the Minneapolis Fed, at roughly 10 million. Our own St. Louis Fed is somewhere in the lower half of the Districts, at roughly 15 million.

These historical data go back to 1970, which allows you to track how the population of each District has grown over the past 50 years or so. During that time, the populations in each of the Dallas, Atlanta, and San Francisco Feds have grown well over 100%. Population growth is lowest at the Chicago and Cleveland Feds, at roughly 10%. The St. Louis Fed is right in the middle of the pack with roughly 32% population growth. So, now you know.

How this map was created: From FRED’s home page, search for and select “Resident Population in Federal Reserve District 8: St. Louis” to plot the time series of population for the Eighth District. In the upper right corner of this plot, click the green button labeled “View Map” to switch to a heat map of population for all Federal Reserve Districts. To view the heat map for an earlier year (e.g., 1970), adjust the date in the “Date” panel at the top (e.g., “1970-01-01”).

Suggested by Michael McCracken.