Federal Reserve Economic Data

Data in FRED can help us understand the scope and specifics of international economic relationships. There’s the flow of goods, of course. But there are also flows of services, primary income (mostly investments and transfers), capital, and other financial transactions.

Collectively, these components make up the balance of payments. Our FRED graph above shows three positive components and their negative counterparts.

• exports and imports of goods, services, and primary income
• capital transfer receipts and payments
• net acquisition of financial assets and liabilities

First, the positive components and their negative counterparts move in a strikingly symmetric fashion.

Second, major movements in the overall US balance of payments seem to be caused by changes in financial assets and liabilities. Although these components aren’t typically as large as exports and imports, they’re the most variable. The other components are fairly stable.

Third, in our graph below, we break down the export and import components into their three subcomponents: goods, services, and primary income. We’ve removed the series titles for readability, but you can hover over the bars to see the specific values. The goods only subcomponents of exports and imports, the top and bottom bars, are much less prominent than total exports and imports.

How these graphs were created: Search FRED for the current account and click on the BEA series. Below the graph and the notes, click on the release table. Check the series you want graphed and click “Add to Graph.” From the “Edit Graph” panel, change the formula on the even-numbered lines to -a. Open the “Format” tab and change the graph to a normally stacked bar graph. Proceed similarly for the second graph, where you can remove the titles in the “Format” tab.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

FRED has data from multiple sources that can help reveal correlations between macroeconomic indicators and policy variables across major economies. For example, the FRED Blog has discussed international comovements in monetary policy before. Today, we dig deeper into economic comovement by looking at recent research from the Richmond Fed.

Researchers Katherine Anderson, Paul Ho, and Nathan Robino used GDP and inflation data from 27 countries between 1981 and 2023 to study how much the U.S. economy moves in parallel with other countries. They found substantial correlations among all countries: “While the comovement is most striking during the Great Recession and COVID-19 periods, it is also visible during the rest of the sample period.”

FRED graphs can fit up to 12 data series at once, but best practice is to use fewer. Our FRED graph above shows the comovement of U.S. GDP annual growth rates (solid dark blue line) and those of the United Kingdom, Japan, and the 19 countries of the Euro Area (various dashed lines) between 1996 and 2024. Simultaneous severe cross-border economic contractions are noticeable during U.S. recessions (shaded areas in the graph), particularly since 2001.

What could help explain these international economic linkages? The Richmond Fed researchers consider two possible channels of economic communication: international trade linkages and global financial networks.

• International trade could transmit demand shocks in one country to all its trading partners.
• Risky asset prices and the risk aversion of investors could also change direction in multiple countries at once, thus creating a global financial cycle.
• Both commercial trade and financial markets may simultaneously combine to influence economic conditions across the world.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Real Gross Domestic Product for United States.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button and select the “Add Line” tab. Search for and add “Real Gross Domestic Product for United Kingdom (DISCONTINUED).” Repeat the last step to add “Real Gross Domestic Product for Japan” and “Real Gross Domestic Product for Euro Area (19 Countries)” to the graph. Next, use the “Edit Lines” tab to select each of the four graph lines from the dropdown menu and change the units to “Percent Change from Year Ago” and modify the frequency to “Annual.” Lastly, use the “Format” tab to customize each line style.

Suggested by Ethan Hunt and Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

FRED recently added 1,502 series of producer price index (PPI) data. PPIs, which are reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), measure the average change over time in sale prices received by domestic producers of goods and services. In other words, PPIs measure price changes from the perspective of the seller.

FRED’s latest data additions expand overall coverage of commodity and industry prices to 12,283 individual series, offering detailed information about a broad swath of economic activity.

As a sample, we built the above FRED graph using the commodity prices of three types of bivalve mollusks: oysters (solid blue line), sea scallops (dash-dot green line), and mussels (dashed orange line). Between January 2016 and the time of this writing, the data show more marked price volatility for sea scallops than for oysters, while the price of mussels appears relatively stable.

The fluctuating prices of a clambake with these ingredients may reflect demand and supply shocks singular to each succulent seafood.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Producer Price Index by Commodity: Processed Foods and Feeds: Oysters.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button and select the “Add Line” tab. Search for and add “Producer Price Index by Commodity: Processed Foods and Feeds: Sea Scallops.” Repeat the last step to add “Producer Price Index by Commodity: Processed Foods and Feeds: Mussels” to the graph.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.