Federal Reserve Economic Data

The COVID-19 pandemic shifted consumption away from services and toward durable goods in unprecedented ways. Consumption of durable goods and services both declined significantly during the first months of the pandemic. Yet, while consumption of services stayed below its pre-pandemic level for a long time, consumption of durable goods recovered in just a few months.

This difference in consumption was due to generous fiscal support and the pandemic’s shifting of consumption habits away from services such as eating in restaurants and traveling and toward purchasing furniture and fitness equipment.

The FRED graph above shows real personal consumption expenditures, normalized to 100 in December 2019, with durable goods in blue and services in red. By April 2021, consumption of durable goods was 33% above its pre-pandemic level, while consumption of services was still 3% below its pre-pandemic level.

This sharp increase in demand for durables together with the inability of supply chains to keep up with that demand exacerbated inflation in these goods (which is covered in depth in our St. Louis Fed Review article). This trend is reflected in the second FRED graph, where we see that inflation before the pandemic was about 2.5 percentage points higher for services (red line) than for durables (blue line).

In recent months, supply chains have started to slowly recover and demand for durable goods has started to decline. So, inflation in durable goods has fallen rapidly, from 18.7% at the peak in February 2022 to 2.4% in November 2022. At the same time, consumption of services has recovered, which has been accompanied by a steady increase in the inflation rate for services: In October 2022, inflation for services exceeded inflation for durables for the first time since the early days of the pandemic.

With services demand going up and labor markets tightening, the pace of increase or decrease in overall CPI inflation will depend on how services and durable goods adjust to new consumption habits.

How these graphs were created:
First graph: Search FRED for “real personalcConsumption” and select “Real Personal Consumption Expenditures: Durable Goods.” Use the “Edit Graph” button in the upper right corner to open the editing box: Change units to “Index (Scale value to 100 for chosen date).” Change the date to 2019-12-01. Next, click the gray “ADD LINE” tab at the top. In the search box, search for “real personal consumption services” and select “Real Personal Consumption Expenditures: Services” Scroll down to “Customize data”: Change units to “Index (Scale value to 100 for chosen date)” and change the date to 2019-12-01.
Second graph: Search FRED for “cpi durables” and select “Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Durables in U.S. City Average.” Use the “Edit Graph” button in the upper right corner to open the editing box: Change units to “Percent change from a year ago.” Next, click the gray “ADD LINE” box at the top. In the search box, search for “cpi services” and select “Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Services Less Energy Services in U.S. City Average.” Change units to “Percent change from a year ago.”

Suggested by Ana Maria Santacreu and Jesse LaBelle.

Our last FRED blog post of the year… Soon it’ll be time to change the calendar on the desk or the wall or (more likely) your phone, which requires no effort at all. But FRED never coasts or slacks off! Although there’s not much data about calendars beyond what’s in the producer price index (shown in the above graph), we definitely have something to say about our own calendar.

FRED maintains an Economic Release Calendar for each day of the year, detailing the data releases published on that date and, if known, also the time of the release. A green checkmark indicates a release has been updated in FRED.

FRED strives to make updates as soon as possible after the primary source makes the data public. Unfortunately, it’s not instantaneous, as FRED needs to doublecheck that the data are plausible and weren’t corrupted during transmission.

It’s a rare occurrence, but over the years we’ve addressed a misplaced decimal point, an unexpected change in units, and a math error, for example. Sometimes the data format or series name changes, which requires some manual labor to update that information for our users. And larger-than-average datasets require higher-than-average response time. But the norm is that the data are available in FRED within a few minutes of their release. Happy New Year!

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “calendar” to get the graph above. Scan the FRED homepage and click the “Release Calendar” link to get to our calendar.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

The end-of-year holidays create the busiest business season for both brick-and-mortar and online retailers. That includes a lot of doorstep package deliveries. When you add Christmas cards and family newsletters to the month of December, you get peak volume for postal traffic.

How, you may ask, can those proverbial couriers swiftly complete their appointed rounds despite the seasonal snow, rain, (scant) heat, (early dusk) gloom, and (shall we add) the highest level of year-round e-commerce activity? The FRED Blog has the answer: By adding more couriers to their ranks during the holidays.

The FRED graph above shows the monthly number of persons employed by the U.S. Postal Service over the past 10 years. The solid green line shows the employment figures recorded every month, and the dashed red line shows the same figures after adjusting them for the predictable and periodic increases and decreases in employment. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports both sets of data, facilitating a more accurate analysis of monthly employment figures throughout the year.

As we wrap up 2022, we can look to the past 10 December peaks in the green line to predict this year’s maximum postal worker employment. Visit us at the FRED Blog a week from today as we start a new year of interesting data highlights.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “All Employees, U.S. Postal Service.” There are two series with that name, but notice the units: One reports “seasonally adjusted” and the other reports “not seasonally adjusted” in thousands of persons. Start with the former. Next, click the “Edit Graph” button and use the “Add Line” tab to add the latter.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.