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Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)

Overview

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data is a database maintained by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It contains over 800,000 economic time series from national and international sources.

FRED is one of the most comprehensive and widely-used economic databases, providing historical time series data on:

  • National and International macroeconomic indicators (GDP, unemployment, inflation)
  • Financial markets (interest rates, exchange rates)
  • Regional economic data (state and metro area statistics)

Data Provider

API Key Setup

  1. Register for an API key: Visit https://fred.stlouisfed.org/docs/api/api_key.html
  2. Set your API key as an environment variable:
export FRED_API_KEY='your_api_key_here'

Or create a .env file in your project root containing the environment variable:

FRED_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Then load it in your Python script using python-dotenv:

from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()

FRED Data Structure

Each series within FRED is organized as a single-dimensional time series identified by a unique dataset_id (e.g., PAYEMS for Total Nonfarm Payrolls). This means that a series key is not required when loading data from FRED as it is with multi-dimensional datasets from other sources (e.g., ONS).

Data can be loaded as simply as:

from macrotrace import MTTimeSeries

# Load time series - this automatically fetches and stores data
payems_series = MTTimeSeries(
    dataset_id="PAYEMS",
    source="fred"
)

Finding Series IDs

FRED's website provides a search function to find series by keywords with the option to search by a specific region, release frequency, or data source.

FRED Search Example

When you find a series of interest, the series ID is displayed directly after the title on the series page. For example, the series ID for United States Gross Domestic Product is GDP.

FRED Series Page Example

Troubleshooting

API Key Not Found

Error: FRED_API_KEY not found in environment

Solution: Ensure your API key is set: 

export FRED_API_KEY='your_key_here'

Series Not Found

Error: Series 'XYZ123' not found

Solution: Verify the series ID at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/