Federal Reserve Economic Data

For nearly 30 years, FRED has served the public’s information needs. And the FRED Blog has discussed the rise of the service economy as the largest activity sector in the U.S. and highlighted the ups and downs of the information industry. Today, we look at the changing employment landscape of the information industry.

The FRED graph above shows the relative amount of employment in each of the six individual sectors that comprise the information industry supersector.

Since January 1990, when the earliest data are available, employment in telecommunications (in purple) has been decreasing: In January 2019 there were 29% fewer employees than 29 years earlier. This fact, combined with a milder reduction in employment numbers in the non-internet-based broadcasting (in green) and publishing (in blue) industries, has made the group of print and software publishers the largest employers in the information supersector.

On the flip side, while motion picture and sound recording industries (in red) have increased their number of employees, it is internet-related activities that have recorded the largest employment growth: Between 1991 and 2019, the number of employees in data processing, hosting, and related services (in teal) grew by 62%. Yet the fastest employment growth was recorded in activities related to producing, storing, and searching for information online (in orange): a whopping 469% growth over 29 years!

While the number of employed persons in each industry reflects the labor intensity of their activities, their growth patterns over time indicate a structural shift in the information services industry.

By the way, did you know that the grandfather of FRED was a mail-in typed report? Check out the FRASER timeline on the nearly 30-year history of FRED. It’s a wonderful evolution of the data information services provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

How this graph was created: From FRED’s main page, browse data by “Release.” Search for “Employment Situation” and navigate the release table menus until you reach “Current Employment Statistics (Establishment Data): Table B-1. Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail, Seasonally adjusted.” From there, check the six boxes under “Information” and click “Add to Graph.” Last, edit the graph’s format by selecting “Graph type: Area” and “Stacking: Percent.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

FRED pushes the boundaries of data availability. It currently boasts close to 800,000 times series, including international data that are mappable with GeoFRED. But FRED hadn’t featured any interplanetary data until now.

The FRED Team has collaborated with the Scientific Knowledge in Extra-Terrestrial Content Hub, Youngstown (SKETCHY) to integrate some of the data from the NASA Mars exploration rovers.

FRED has scores of socio-economic time series, the most basic data category. And that is the first type of Martian data to be added to FRED. This series starts with data from the first rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, in January 2004. (Sojourner, in 1997, was too short-lived to offer significant data.) The currently active rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, provide continued opportunities for interplanetary data enthusiasts. We hope to expand coverage with a prototype FRED rover, Confidence Interval. We also hope to expand to interstellar trade data, so our users can test empirically some conjectures from the economic literature.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “Mars” and click on the most appropriate link.

Suggested by Genevieve Podleski and Christian Zimmermann.

In 2020, being confined at home—say, with children or new work requirements—may have changed people’s housing preferences. At least temporarily. New demand for space has led to a rush on single-family homes and, naturally, a stronger-than-usual increase in prices.

Our GeoFRED map above shows that price increases were unequal across the U.S. states from 2019:Q4 to 2020:Q4. California had among the smallest price increases, while the Mountain West region and to some extent the South had strong increases.

The supply of housing can’t easily accommodate increases in demand, especially when they’re sudden. It takes time to buy land, plan, and build. Also, construction costs have been higher because of pandemic restrictions, shortages in materials, and increased demand. This has all translated in a dramatic decrease in the number of houses up for sale.

The GeoFRED map below shows how much that housing inventory has decreased in each state from February 2020 to February 2021. It looks remarkably similar to the above map. Quite a few states have less than half the inventory for sale from a year prior.

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.