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.