July 31, 2017

You Want Data? FRED to the Rescue.

Austin Frakt posted an old New York Times chart of personal expenditures, and a reader has a question:


The answer, as it is so often, is FRED, the economic data aggregator from the St. Louis Fed. Here it is:

When I use data from FRED, I always include it as a source. Why? Because it’s a great service, and deserves to get more credit. They don’t cover literally everything—for some reason, the Census Bureau doesn’t share its data, for example—but they cover a helluva lot. And once you learn how to use it, you have fast, convenient access to data from dozens of agencies. I probably could have dug up this chart over at the BEA, but it would have taken me a while. FRED made it the work of a few minutes.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON MOTHER JONES' FINANCES

We need to start being more upfront about how hard it is keeping a newsroom like Mother Jones afloat these days.

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