Federal Reserve Economic Data

In a recent post, we looked at US-India trade. Today we look at the amount of labor in India that provides their goods and services. In short, India’s workers put in more hours than workers in almost* any other country.

It’s common to use the unemployment rate or the employment-to-population ratio to measure an economy’s performance. A less-familiar metric is how many hours workers are actually working. Our FRED map above shows the average annual hours worked by “persons engaged.” That is, the total number of hours worked per year divided by the average number of persons employed, both full-time and part-time, in the formal and informal sectors of the economy, accounting for holidays, sick leave, and overtime. The time frame is 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

This metric represents the labor input of a country, where a higher value implies more input. It’s a good measure to use to compare labor inputs across countries. And our map tells a simple but potentially overlooked story: India is among the hardest-working economies in the world. Workers in India spent more than 2,600 hours per year on the job. 

Most of the advanced economies have much lower inputs and fall into the lighter shades on the map. In most parts of Europe, for example, the typical work year is closer to 1,600 hours. In the United States, which has a relatively high number of work hours for an advanced economy, the average worker puts in fewer than 1800 hours. And India is an outlier even among the countries of South and Southeast Asia.

*We can’t say India works the most hours of any country because FRED doesn’t have labor input data for some countries (shaded in gray in the map).

A sample of countries and their hours worked in 2019

1st India  2605.39

2nd Bangladesh  2417.72

3rd Pakistan  2390.25

…

15th Vietnam  2067.56

16th Russian Federation  2062.40                

17th Taiwan  2052.85

…

28th Romania  1803.11

29th United States  1796.65

30th Poland  1796.51

…

64th Norway  1418.55

65th Denmark  1372.39

66th Germany  1372.04

How this map was created: Search FRED for and select “Average Annual Hours Worked by Persons Engaged for India.” Next, click “View Map,” set the date to 2019-01-01, and click “Edit Map.” Under “Format,” make sure the “Number of color groups” is 5. Under “Data grouped by,” select “User Defined Method.” Set the intervals as follows: 1600, 1900, 2200, 2500, and 2800. Finally, click “Apply intervals.”

Suggested by Kritika Chakrabarti, B. Ravikumar, and Debargha Som.

Nasdaq datasets cover end-of-day index values, performance, and volatility analytics that span geographies and asset classes.

Our FRED graph above shows 3 of these series: The flagship Nasdaq composite index (solid blue line), the large-capitalization Nasdaq-100 index (dashed green line), and the Nasdaq-100 Technology Sector index (orange dash-dot line). We customized the data series into indexes with a value of 100 in April 2020, the end of the COVID-19 recession, to compare their evolution during the past five years.

What patterns can we see?

First and foremost, the three indexes move together. The technology index has been relatively more volatile than the other two. And, since mid-2021, the large-capitalization index has outperformed the market-wide composite index.

FRED now has 9,705 series of Nasdaq’s daily indexes in a broad range of categories. Several are listed below. You can learn more by visiting the source’s website.

• Flagship composites of non-financial securities listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange Market such as the Nasdaq Composite index and the Nasdaq-100.
• Sector-specific indexes under the PHLX rubric.
• Market-capitalization indexes in the AlphaDEX® family.
• Technical analysis indexes reported by Nasdaq Dorsey Wright.
• Thematic indexes such as the Nasdaq volatility index and the OMX Nordic series.
• Indexes of international securities segmented by region, country, size, and industry.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “NASDAQ Composite Index.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button and select the “Add Line” tab to search for “NASDAQ 100 Index.” Don’t forget to click on “Add data series.” Repeat the last two steps to search for and add “NASDAQ-100 Technology Sector.” Next, use the “Edit Line” tab to change the units to “Index (Scale value to 100 for chosen date).” Select the “2020-04-01 End” date and click on “Copy to all.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

How much are members of the US military paid compared with civilian employees of the federal government? In short, they’re paid less.

Our FRED graph above plots the average compensation of military personnel as a percentage of the average compensation of civilian employees of the federal government. Let’s look at the percentages in relation to some geopolitical and military events along this 25-year timeline:

Before the 9/11/2001 attacks, an average member of the military earned about 70% of what an average civilian government employee earned. From 2001 to 2009, the average military paycheck became increasingly comparable to a civilian paycheck, peaking in 2009 at 94%.

Operation Iraqi Freedom ended in 2010, and Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011. These dates coincide with the start of a decline in the pay of military personnel relative to the pay of civilian government employees. The decline brought a military paycheck down to around 80% of a civilian paycheck in 2017. Since 2017, there’s been a slow increase again.

Of course, the graph doesn’t explain why the military are paid less than the civilian employees of the US government. But it does show that increased demand for military services abroad and the likely heightened risk faced by the military during the 2001-2009 period coincided with increased compensation relative to the civilian. And this is exactly what one would expect from a basic supply-and-demand analysis.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Compensation of employees: Federal general government: Military (W4080C0A144NBEA).” Click on “Edit Graph” and, in sequence, add the following series to the graph: Full-time equivalent employees: Federal general government: Military (B4380C0A173NBEA), Compensation of employees: Federal general government: Civilian (B4079C0A144NBEA), Full-time equivalent employees: Federal general government: Civilian (B4379C0A173NBEA). In the “Formula” field, enter (a/b) / (c/d) * 100 and click “Apply formula.”

Suggested by Guillaume Vandenbroucke.