Federal Reserve Economic Data

On September 26, 2025, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released real GDP data for all US states for the second quarter of 2025. The FRED map above shows the percent change growth rates from the previous quarter: Red denotes contraction, light green denotes slight growth, and dark green denotes rapid growth.

Highlights

• 48 of 50 state economies grew in the second quarter, with a national average of 3.3% growth annualized.
• The median state grew at 3.5%, and 23 other states had slower growth than the US average.
• North Dakota had the fastest growth, at 7.3% annualized.
• Arkansas had the steepest contraction, at –1.1% annualized.

The St. Louis Fed’s Eighth District states all grew except for Arkansas and Mississippi, which contracted 1.1% and 0.9%, respectively. Illinois and Kentucky were the only District states that grew above the national average: Illinois had the largest growth, at about 4.8%, and Kentucky grew 4.6%. Missouri, Tennessee, and Indiana were all close to the national average, each growing 3.1%.

NOTE: These data are subject to future revision by the source. Our ALFRED database records vintages of the data, so users can view the data as they appeared at various points in history. The link takes you to real GDP for Missouri, as of September 26, 2025.

How this map was created: Search FRED for “Real Total Gross Domestic Product for Missouri” and click the first available series. Click the “View Map” button and then the blue “Edit Map” button. Modify the units to “Compounded Annual Rate of Change.” Use “Format” to switch the number of color groups to 3, with the data grouped by “User Defined Method”; then define the scales to be 0, 4, and 10. For values less than 0, choose red to show contraction; for values less than 4, choose light green to show slight growth; for values less than 10, choose dark green to show faster growth.

Suggested by John Fuller and Violeta Gutkowski.

Net worth is the difference between total assets and liabilities. Tracking changes in the distribution of net worth can provide insight into how individual economic groups are faring, at least compared with each other.

Our FRED graph above uses Board of Governors financial accounts data from third quarter 1989 to first quarter 2025 to track five percentile groups of US households:

• Top 0.1%
• Top 1%
• 90th to 99th percentiles
• 50th to 90th percentiles
• 1st to 50th percentiles

For most of the time, the 90th to 99th percentile group (pink line) has had the largest share of overall net worth. Much of the time it’s closely followed by the 50th to 90th percentile group (green line).

In 2003, the shares of these two groups began to diverge and the gap between them began to widen.

Right before and throughout the pandemic, however, that gap markedly shrank: The share of the 90th to 99th percentile group decreased as the share of the 50th to 90th percentile group increased, shown by the convergence of the green line and the pink line.

The difference in aggregate wealth between these groups was 11.4 percentage points in 2019:Q2. In 2022:Q3, that difference fell to nearly 5 percentage points, the lowest it’s been since 2006.

Some background

It’s possible that changes in spending behaviors and income set off by COVID-19 contributed to a smaller gap between the 90th to 99th percentile group and the next 40 percentiles.

In their FEDS Notes article, Michael Batty, Ella Deeken, and Alice Henriques Volz report that a rebound in the stock market combined with increases in pension entitlements drove up assets for the 50th to 90th percentile group.

Our FRED graph below shows the difference in the share of wealth between the 90th to 99th percentile group and the 50th to 90th percentile group. Although the gap fell somewhat drastically from 2019 to 2022, it has risen in recent years, indicating that lower inequality between these groups might be short-lived.

How these graphs were created: Search FRED for “share of net worth” and select the first series labeled by percentile. Use the “Add line” tab to search for and select the other four percentile groups. For the second graph, select the 90th to 99th net worth percentile series. Use the “Customize Data” tab to search for and add the 50th to 90th group. Type a-b in the formula field.

Suggested by Anna Cole and Michael McCracken.

Consumer price indices are supposed to cover everything that households buy. That includes “administratively set prices” for various fees and taxes. Postal services is one example.

Our FRED graph above shows postal services price indexes for a few European countries. These prices typically change infrequently; thus, their evolution often looks like a step function. (This step pattern can also occur for some product categories that aren’t sampled every month, such as housing rents.)

There’s also some indication these price have changed more frequently recently. This may have to do with the “technological” innovation in some countries of labeling stamps as a service instead of a value, which makes it easier to change the price. (Read more about this menu-cost theory of price stickiness.)

Our second FRED graph, above, provides some local color: In the Netherlands and Latvia, letter postage is lower in December to encourage people to write to family and friends for the holidays. There are even special December stamps that are valid only from mid-November to early January.

Our third FRED graph, above, explores the interesting case of Denmark. The Danes have highly advanced digital communications and send few physical letters anymore. Their postage prices (solid blue line) have increased much more than their general level of prices (dashed green line). It now costs 29 Danish kroner ($4.56) to mail a domestic letter, and the Danish postal service will stop delivering letters at the end of 2025.

Then there’s the case of Turkey, shown in our final FRED graph below. They’ve had an even speedier increase in postal prices, but it’s largely due to overall inflation.

How these graphs were created: Search FRED for and select the “postal Spain” price index. From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Add Line” tab to search for and select the “postal Greece” and “postal France” series. From the “Format” tab, change the line patterns to make the separate steps more apparent. Use a similar process for the other graphs.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.