Federal Reserve Economic Data

The government shutdown affected economic data collection

The 43-day lapse in congressional appropriations, which began on October 1 and lasted until November 12, 2025, has been the longest on record. Without funds to pay for employee salaries and business operations, multiple federal agencies stopped collecting and reporting data.

After funding was restored and normal operations resumed, plans were announced to backfill many of the data gaps created by the shutdown. But not all gaps will be filled. Some will likely remain blank spaces.

An example of missing data

Our FRED graph above offers a historical example of a missing observation in a time series of data. The solid blue line shows the average price of field-grown tomatoes in US cities between January 2012 and December 2015. The source of the data, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, did not report a value for October 2013. So, there’s a gap in the plotted line on that date. If you download the data file for this time series shown in the graph, there’ll be a blank value next to the 2013-10-01 date.

How do statistical agencies deal with missing data?

Statistical agencies use a process known as imputation to handle missing data points in surveys and to estimate the value of certain economic activities that are not directly measurable. However, when the surveys themselves are not completed, the imputation techniques cannot be applied and there will be missing data across multiple data releases. You can see a complete list of canceled releases from the BLS here.

Note: The FRED team updates the FRED database as soon as new data are made available. When individual data are not reported by the source, they’re shown as blank spaces in a FRED graph and as empty values in a data file download. The FRED Team does not impute values for missing observations.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Average Price: Tomatoes, Field Grown (Cost per Pound/453.6 Grams) in U.S. City Average.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

The FRED Blog has discussed how the daily operations of the Federal Reserve Banks and, specifically, the New York Fed generally maintain the effective federal funds rate within the target range set by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).

As part of this management effort, the New York Fed monitors a variety of overnight interest rates that help take the pulse of financial markets and the overall cost of borrowing. Data added to FRED last October allow us to see how recent changes to the Federal Reserve System’s balance sheet have impacted money market conditions.

The FRED graph above shows two different categories of rates:

• Interest rates set by financial markets:
  • Solid red line: The effective federal funds rate (EEFR), which is set by financial institutions who charge one another for unsecured overnight loans in what is known as the federal funds market.
  • Dashed blue line: The tri-party general collateral rate (TGCR), which is set by financial institutions that borrow and lend from one another, through a third party, offering Treasury securities as collateral for overnight repayment.
• Interest rate target range set by the FOMC. The dotted orange lines show the targeted upper and lower limits of rates for trading in the federal funds market, described above.

Over the past year, the EEFR has steadily remained within its targeted limits, while the TGCR has fluctuated above and below the EEFR, sometimes even exceeding the EEFR’s upper target limit.

The gradual reduction in the amount of Treasury securities held in the Federal Reserve System’s balance sheet, combined with the Treasury’s management of its own holdings at the Fed, can help explain the volatility of the TGCR. The draining of Treasury securities from financial markets has made them dearer to institutions relying on them to borrow and lend overnight, in turn making interest rates more responsive to small day-to-day changes in their availability.

For more information about daily financial markets and monetary policy implementation, see these November 12, 2025, remarks by the Manager of the Federal Reserve System Open Market Account and this Implementation Note issued by the FOMC on December 10, 2025.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Federal Funds Target Range – Upper Limit.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button and select the “Add Line” tab to search for “Tri-Party General Collateral Rate.” Don’t forget to click on “Add data series.” Repeat the last two steps to search for and add the other two series: “Federal Funds Effective Rate” and “Federal Funds Target Range – Lower Limit.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

Every December, retailers hire a large number of extra workers to keep up with holiday demand. Our FRED graph above shows a clear seasonal spike in the number of retail employees at the end of the year, as stores bring on temporary and part-time workers to stock shelves, run registers, and load presents. Hiring picks up in November, peaks in December, and then falls once the holidays are over.

Our second FRED graph shows average hourly earnings for retail workers. Even though more “elves” are on the job than at any other time of year, average hourly earnings in retail often dip a bit in December. That doesn’t necessarily mean these workers are getting a pay cut. It’s likely that holiday hiring brings in seasonal workers who tend to earn lower wages than permanent, full-time staff. So, when you average all workers in December, the seasonal workers bring the average wage down.

How these graphs were created: For the first graph, search FRED for “All Employees, Retail Trade” and select the Monthly, Thousands of Persons, Not Seasonally Adjusted series. For the second graph, search FRED for “All Employees, Retail Trade” and select the Monthly, Dollars per Hour, Not Seasonally Adjusted series. Finally, start the sample period on 2020-11-01 for both graphs.

Suggested by Bill Dupor and Melanie LeTourneau.