Federal Reserve Economic Data

The FRED Blog has celebrated each time we’ve published 100 posts. The commentary on these milestones is sometimes only tenuously related to the number of the post, especially after we surpassed 1000. Today’s post is number 1111, which evokes thoughts of numerologists and data-conscious folk who need to point out when their clock shows 11:11. Today is also just a few days shy of November 11, Veterans Day this year. And, for some, corduroy appreciation day.

So, we went fishing into FRED and came up with a couple of graphs for 1111. The one above shows that the share of GDP in GDP is consistently 1, period after period. Just to be thorough, the graph shows the data with both an annual and a quarterly frequency. We’ll keep this graph in mind for post number 11,111. Note that these series come from the GDP release, Section 1 (Domestic Product and Income), Table 1.1.10.

Our second graph comes from FRED’s collection of recession indicators: This series has a value of 1 for every month when the US was deemed to be in recession and 0 otherwise. Such series are called indicator series or sometimes dummy series. The OECD also used to present such recession indicators for its member countries until 2022. More can be found on this page.

You can cast your own thematic net into the great pond of FRED and see what you come up with.

How these graphs were created: For the first graph, search FRED for and select GDP share of GDP’s quarterly series. It may be easier to use the series ID: A191RE1Q156NBEA. Click on “Edit Graph,” open the “Add Line” tab, and search for GDP share of GDP annual series: ID A191RE1A156NBEA. For the second graph, search FRED for “NBER recession” and click one of the options.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) sets or manages several interest rates related to monetary policy. The FRED Blog has discussed this before. Today we tap into some recently added FRED data to describe how the Federal Reserve System keeps the effective federal funds rate (the FOMC’s preferred monetary policy instrument) between its upper and lower target range limits.

The FRED graph above shows two different categories of rates.

• An interest rate set by financial markets
  • Solid red line: The effective federal funds rate, which is set by financial institutions who charge one another for overnight loans in what is known as the federal funds market.
• Interest rates set by the FOMC
  • Dotted orange lines: The targeted upper and lower limits of rates for trading in the federal funds market, described above.
  • Dashed dark blue line: The Discount Window primary credit rate, which is the overnight rate charged to financial institutions that borrow from Federal Reserve Banks.
  • Dashed light blue line: The Standing Repo (SRP) operations rate, which is the rate accepted by the New York Fed for repurchase agreements (repos). Repo transactions add short-term liquidity to financial markets.
  • Dashed purple line: The reverse repo (repurchase agreement) award rate, which is the minimum bid rate accepted by the New York Fed for propositions in reverse repo operations. Reverse repo transactions withdraw liquidity from financial markets.

In short, Federal Reserve Banks (which manage the discount window in their own Districts) and the New York Fed (which manages daily repo and reverse repo transactions) generally maintain the effective federal funds rate within the target range set by the FOMC.

The New York Fed’s website has more detail about daily financial markets and monetary policy implementation.

Notes: Don’t worry if you can’t separate some of the lines in the graph: Both the Discount window’s primary credit rate (in dark blue) and the Standing Repo Facility minimum bid rate (in light blue) are closely linked to the top of the target range (in orange). Similarly, the reverse repo award rate (in purple) is closely linked to the bottom of the target range (in orange). These relationships are a matter of choice, not rule.

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 “Discount Window Primary Credit Rate.” Don’t forget to click on “Add data series.” Repeat the last two steps to search for and add the other four series: “Standing Repo Facility Minimum Bid Rate”, “Federal Funds Effective Rate”, “Overnight Reverse Repurchase Agreements Award Rate”, and “Federal Funds Target Range – Lower Limit.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

Celebrating Halloween is becoming more popular in some European countries. Wearing costumes can be fun anywhere, but there may be differences in the cost of giving away candy, depending on the country. Happily, FRED has consumer price inflation data for Europe that can help us go trick-and-treating around this question.

The treat

The FRED graph above shows the change in the harmonized index of consumer prices for sugar, jam, honey, chocolate, and confectionery for four European countries currently using the euro as their domestic currency. To make comparisons easier, we start the data in September 2015, when the index had a value close to 100 for all these countries. As of September 2025:

• Estonia (solid blue line) had the highest inflation for all things sweet: 101.6%
• Belgium and Luxembourg (dashed green and orange lines) had treat-price inflation rates closest to the Eurozone median value of 41.8%
• Ireland (solid purple line) had steady deflation between 2015 and mid-2022 and a cumulative 7.6% treat-price increase over the past decade.

The trick

Bulgaria is scheduled to join the euro area in January 2026. Beyond the convenience of using a single currency to shop for candy in nearby countries using the euro, using a common currency could also temper some recent inflationary pressure in Bulgaria. However, as shown above and discussed earlier in the FRED Blog, using the same currency in multiple countries does not mean the inflation rate will be the same everywhere.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices: Sugar, Jam, Honey, Chocolate and Confectionery for Estonia.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button and select the “Add Line” tab to search for “Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices: Sugar, Jam, Honey, Chocolate and Confectionery for Belgium.” Don’t forget to click on “Add data series.” Repeat the last two steps to search for and add the corresponding price index data for Luxembourg and Ireland.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.