Federal Reserve Economic Data

FRED has data from Indeed.com, an online aggregator of job listings. The data are the percentage changes in seasonally adjusted job postings since February 1, 2020. That date is set by the source as the pre-COVID-19 pandemic baseline.

The FRED graph above shows large declines in the number of job postings in Australia, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and France during and immediately after the February-April recession (indicated by the shaded area in the graph). Although this dating of the recession shown here reflects economic conditions in the United States, per the National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee, we can see marked co-movement in the number of job postings across countries. Such a pattern isn’t surprising, given the worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the evolution of country-level job postings after March 31, 2021, is more intriguing.

• The decline in the number of job postings continued for another month or so in many countries. In the case of the United Kingdom, it extended into the first week of June 2020.
• There were noticeable reductions in the number of job postings in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom at the end of both 2020 and 2021. These are intriguing because the data are seasonally adjusted and, thus, do not reflect the regular ebbs and flows in employment that match the calendar year.
• The earliest bounce back in job postings to pre-pandemic levels, at the end of 2020, was recorded in Australia and, soon after, in the United States. Data on U.S. job openings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show a very similar timing.

Lastly, the percentage changes in the number of U.S. job postings are noticeably less volatile month over month than those recorded in other countries. The differences in volatility may reflect differences in the relative size of Indeed.com in each country: the same change, measured in absolute value, in job postings in two countries will result in unequal percent changes when the total number of job postings themselves are different. This makes data from small samples  less informative.

In that light, it is difficult to interpret the reason behind the decline in U.S. job postings recorded since the start of 2022. Is it an early sign of a change in the phase of the labor market cycle, or does it merely indicate a switch to other channels to look for job candidates? The BLS data we referenced above does not show a contemporaneous decline in job openings, so we can’t provide even a tentative answer to this question. The FRED Blog will have more to say about the story behind those numbers when the data arrive.

How this graph was created: Start from the release table “Job Postings Indexed Trend,” check the series labeled “Change in Job Postings Indexed Trend,” and click “Add to Graph.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

In the United States, we typically pay for goods with U.S. dollars. Hence, the consumer price index (CPI) looks at a basket of goods priced in U.S. dollars. But what if the CPI were priced in Bitcoin? The FRED graph above shows the inflation rates for this basket of goods in U.S. dollars (blue line) and in Bitcoin (red line).

Even our currently high inflation rate in U.S. dollars is dwarfed by the towering peaks of the inflation rate in Bitcoin—not to mention Bitcoin’s wild gyrations. Never in the history of the U.S. dollar has the inflation rate reached the heights that Bitcoin has on several occasions in a few years.

Bitcoin also exhibits severe deflations. That’s problematic for a currency used for transactions: With deflation, consumers expect goods to become less expensive and thus wait to buy, which can lead to a collapse of the economy. Given that the dollar has been available (and not deflating), there was no economic collapse. To be clear: Bitcoin is used very little for transactions anyway, maybe because of these repeated deflations.

To continue being clear: The U.S. dollar also has had deflationary episodes, although not as severe. Our second graph is the same as our first graph but with the addition of a few other price indexes starting in 1850. You can see several episodes of deflation. (Use the sliders below the graph to exclude the Bitcoin years for better visibility.) Each of those deflationary episodes is associated with a recession, noted by the gray shading.

Notable dollar deflations haven’t happened for a long time. Why not? All the significant deflations happened during a period where the supply of U.S. dollars was tied to the quantity of gold: in other words, when the U.S. economy was on the gold standard. With no means to manage the supply of dollars, there was no way to avoid fluctuations in price when the demand for money fluctuated. After the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, it was at least possible to alleviate regional variations in money demand by shuttling cash across the nation, but the total quantity of money was set.

Bitcoin is similar in that it also has a more-or-less fixed quantity that cannot respond to fluctuations in demand. Thus, its price is bound to fluctuate more than the U.S. dollar, the supply of which the Federal Reserve can manage to avoid high inflation, deflation, and inflation volatility.

How these graphs were created: First graph: Search FRED for “CPI” but don’t click on the first choice. Seek out the series that covers from 1913 to today, which is not seasonally adjusted (as the other series are). From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Add Line” tab to search for the same CPI series. Then add a series to the second line by searching for “Bitcoin.” Apply formula a/b and at the bottom of the form choose the units “Percent change from previous year.” Finally, limit the visible years to those that have Bitcoin data. Second graph: Add new lines by searching for “general price level” and “index of wholesale prices.” Make sure they’re also expressed as percent changes and expand the window to include all years.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

The FRED graph above tracks the price of eggs. Specifically, a dozen large grade A chicken eggs, in U.S. dollars, for each month since January 2021.

This graph is a histogram, otherwise known as a bar graph, so the length of each bar represents the full price. Merely glancing at the heights of the bars shows us that the price fluctuates over time, with a low of $1.47 and a high of $2.52 as of April. This runny volatility is why food prices, along with energy prices, are often excluded from monetary policy analysis.

Cracking open this first concept is fairly simple, but the FRED Blog team hatched the idea of asking another question: What would the graph look like if we purchased that same carton of eggs with bitcoins instead of U.S. dollars? The graph below shows this. Because a bitcoin is worth so much more than a carton of eggs, we multiplied the price by 100 million to express it in so-called satoshis, which is the smallest subunit of bitcoin.

The price fluctuates quite a bit, between 2829 and 6086, which is much more than it did for the U.S. dollar price. Plus, you’d need to add a bitcoin transaction fee, which has been about $2 lately, but which can spike above $50 on occasion. Hopefully, if you were making this purchase with bitcoin, you’d put many many more eggs in your basket.

How these graphs were created: First graph: Search FRED for “price of eggs”; the series we use should appear at the top of the results. Restrict the sample period to start in January 2021. From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Format” tab to choose “Bar” as the graph type. Second graph: Take the first and add a series to the first line by searching for and selecting “bitcoin price” and applying formula a/b*100000000.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.