Federal Reserve Economic Data

The economy is susceptible to shocks such as pandemics, natural disasters, and financial panics, which can have serious implications. And it can be challenging for economists to capture these economic effects in real-time, as many key economic indicators are released with a considerable lag. For example, real GDP for the second quarter of 2023 was released on July 27, 2023, about one month after the quarter ended. Unemployment rate data, from example, is more timely: Measures for the middle of July were released last week, on August 4, 2023.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns had immediate impacts on the economy, and economists have turned to higher-frequency data released weekly or even daily. These high-frequency data releases have historically been limited to financial market metrics such as interest rates on bonds, commodity prices, and stock prices. These data provide useful information on financial conditions, but lack detail on the real economy (i.e., the state of households and businesses). Economists have begun to explore new data series, such as TSA passenger traffic, online restaurant bookings, and weekly employment directly from payroll companies. These data, however, often lack the long histories necessary to provide a clear economic signal. For example, a commonly cited real-time metric, the Weekly Economic Index, has been tracked only since 2009.

One notable exception is the Department of Labor’s weekly unemployment insurance (UI) claims data: They began reporting these data at a weekly frequency in 1945, and the series in FRED goes back to 1967. This long-standing timely reporting and straightforward interpretation make the UI report one of the most important indicators for monitoring economic activity.

Two key series from the UI report are initial claims and continued claims. Initial claims is the count of individuals filing for unemployment insurance benefits each week. While some claims may later be rejected, initial claims is still a good measure of the flow of individuals into unemployment. Continued claims is the stock of individuals who have received unemployment insurance benefits the prior week and have again filed for continued benefits.

While people can be unemployed and not receive UI benefits (such as recent graduates searching for their first job), UI data have historically provided an accurate picture of where the national unemployment rate is headed. The FRED graph above plots weekly continued claims for unemployment (blue line) and the unemployment rate (red line) starting in January 1967.

Notice in the graph that both continued claims and the unemployment rate rise at the start of recessions (gray shaded regions) and continue to rise throughout the duration of the recession. They only begin to fall after a recession has ended. During the most recent recession, continued claims reached their highest level during the week of May 9, 2020.

Data from the FRED graph below show signs of the economy gradually recovering from the effects of the pandemic. Both initial and continued claims for unemployment insurance benefits steadily declined to their pre-pandemic levels: about 200,000 initial claims for UI benefits and 1.8 million continued claims. As the labor market became increasingly tight during the summer and fall of 2022, workers found it much easier to quickly find new jobs. As a result, continued claims dropped to as low as 1.3 million. High-profile layoffs and slower job growth during late 2022 and early 2023 led to upticks in initial claims. This trend, along with a steady rise in continued claims, prompted concern that the US economy may dip into a recession. However, while initial claims for UI benefits may be slightly elevated from recent history, continued claims appear to have reached a peak in April 2023, again suggesting unemployed workers are having an easier time finding jobs. Keeping a close eye on the UI claims has been and continues to be one of the most effective ways gauge the state of the labor market in real-time.

How these graphs were created: For the first graph, search FRED for “Continued Claims (Insured Unemployment).” Keep the units as “Number” and the frequency as “Weekly, Ending Saturday.” Click “Add Line” and add the series “Unemployment Rate.” Keep the units as “Percent” and the frequency as “Monthly.” Finally, click “Format” and change the line axis position of “Line 2” to “Right.”
For the second graph, search FRED for “Continued Claims (Insured Unemployment).” Keep the units as “Number” and the frequency as “Weekly, Ending Saturday.” Click “Add Line” and add the series “Initial Claims.” Keep the units as “Number” and the frequency as “Weekly, Ending Saturday.” Click “Format” and change the line axis position of “Line 2” to “Right” and change the date range to show the previous three years of data.

Suggested by Charles Gascon and Sean McQuade.

College attainment in the US has been on the rise over the past several decades. To understand how this trend has affected different areas of the country, we map the distribution of college-educated adults.

The FRED map above color codes the percentage of adult residents with a bachelor’s degree for each county in the United States. These percentages have been calculated as averages over the 5-year period between 2017 and 2021. Adult residents are defined as being at least 18 years of age. The darkest shade indicates the highest concentration of college-educated residents, which is between 29.6% and 78.7%. The lightest shade indicates the lowest concentration, which is below 15.3%. The legend specifies the brackets for all five shades used in the map.

Clearly, college graduates are not evenly spread out across the United States. Counties with greater percentages of college graduates appear to be concentrated in the Northeast and west of Colorado. Counties with the lowest percentages of college graduates tend to be concentrated in the Southeast. There’s also a clear tendency of the college educated to be concentrated in urban areas. Especially notable are the coasts, which of course include the large metropolitan areas of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Also notable are the inland cities of Chicago, Austin, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Denver, and some smaller university towns. But, interestingly, even the rural counties in the Northeast (e.g., Vermont) tend to have a higher concentration of college graduates than the rural areas of the Southeast.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “Bachelor’s Degree or Higher.” The results will show “Bachelor’s Degree or Higher (5-year estimate) in [insert your favorite county here] County.” Choose a county and click on the “View Map” button at the top right of the graph.

Suggested by Oksana Leukhina and Amy Smaldone.

Does it feel like eating out has changed since the pandemic? Restaurants seem busier than ever, yet they also seem to be facing a great deal of staff shortages. Is this borne out in the data?

FRED collects data on both retail sales and employment for different industries. In this post, we compare data for the Food Services and Drinking Places industry, which contains full- and limited-service restaurants as well as bars. The retail sales data come from the Census Bureau and measure the dollar value of monthly sales nationwide. The employment data come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and measure the number of employed persons.

The graph above combines these two series by dividing retail sales (adjusted for inflation) by employment. The resulting line can be interpreted as the dollar amount of sales per employee, which gives an idea of how much the sector is producing relative to how many people are generating that  output. It’s closely related to what economists call labor productivity.

In the decade before the pandemic, this measure was relatively flat in some periods and growing in others, from around $5,700 in 2010 to around $6,500 at the start of 2020. After a big drop during the pandemic, it quickly bounced back, hitting an all-time high of about $7,700 in July 2021. It’s now hovering around $7,300.

The higher levels are driven by both components: a faster increase in real sales combined with employment only just now returning to its pre-pandemic level. The 2020-2021 numbers were at some points certainly above their pre-pandemic trends, but they appear to be moderating. So the graph seems to confirm that restaurants are producing more than they were before with fewer workers, which could be a part of why the industry has changed so much since the pandemic.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “Retail Sales: Food Services and Drinking Places.” Next, click the “Edit Graph Button” and under “Customize data” search for “Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average.” Then click “Add.” It will appear as series (b). Change the units to “Index (Scale value to 100 for chosen date)” and type in “2023-05-01” as the date. Then, under “Customize data” search for “All Employees, Food Services and Drinking Places” and click “Add.” It will appear as series (c). For “Units,” use “Thousands of Persons.” Next, under “Formula,” combine them as follows: ((100/b)*(a*1000000))/(c*1000). This adjusts the sales data for inflation, puts sales into dollars and employment into numbers of persons. Click “Apply.” Finally, set the lower bound of the date to “2010-01-01” in the upper right above the graph.

Suggested by Victoria Gregory.