FRED blog posts tagged by macro theme. Useful for the macro paragraph in your monthly finance package, for benchmarking your deposit and loan numbers against the national trend, and for spotting what the Fed's research staff finds interesting before it shows up in mainstream coverage.
The takeaway The New York Fed’s consumer credit dataset is now calculated with a different methodology—one that includes 33 million more borrowers than before. The Consumer Credit Panel With a data update on August 10, 2026, the New York Fed … Continue reading →
The name In the 1980s, Texas had a banking crisis whose causes included shocks in oil prices and real estate investments. In response, Gerard Cassidy of the Royal Bank of Canada developed the Texas ratio metric to assess a bank’s … Continue reading →
The takeaway Small businesses with lower credit risk tend to receive all the financing they seek more often than businesses with higher credit risk, which may be newer, smaller, and more in need of financing.   Small business credit Fed … Continue reading →
The quarterly banking profile of FDIC-insured institutions provides an overview of their aggregate financial condition, including data on bank earnings, loan and deposit activity, and asset quality. According to theses profiles, mortgage-backed securities make up more than half o
The FRED Blog has discussed why employment in retail and postal services peak around the Christmas holidays. Today we tap into a 2018 research piece from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago to discuss why construction employment may follow different … Continue reading ͛
The takeaway The Kansas City Fed uses options prices to measure how financial markets perceive the balance of risks for future short-term interest rates: a.k.a., the KC Policy Rate Skew. The data Options are publicly traded financial instruments that reflect … Continue read
The takeaway When tariffs were relatively stable, prices for durable goods such as appliances, electronics, and furniture were declining by as much as 3% year-over-year. But in 2025, the effective tariff rate surged to over 11% and durable goods prices … Continue reading &#
The takeaway Although data center construction and semiconductor purchases are both related to the AI boom, changes in their prices may be occurring at different stages of the investment process.   Producer price index Our FRED graph above shows the … Continue reading
National employment growth in the second quarter of 2026 accelerated slightly to 0.3% compared with one year ago. However, this aggregate figure conceals wide variation in job growth across U.S. states: 38 states experienced job growth, while 12 states plus … Continue readi
The takeaway Employment of software coders has decelerated sharply since 2022. Recent research suggests this job-specific shock isn’t caused by a slowing industry but likely from the emergence of AI tools. What employment data show Our FRED graph above shows … Continue read
The takeaway The federal minimum wage is the lowest hourly rate employers are required to pay workers. It’s been $7.25 per hour for a while now. State minimum wages are a different story: Many are higher than the federal minimum, … Continue reading →
From last May to this May, manufacturing employment decreased by 0.4%. This number may seem small, but it’s a nationwide figure that can hide considerable variation across US states. So, in the FRED map above, we show state-specific numbers for … Continue reading U
The takeaway The most recent measure of the cost of owning a home (vs. renting a home) remains near historical peaks, suggesting renting today is a relatively better financial choice for housing. To own or not to own? Which is … Continue reading →
The recent AI boom has renewed debate about how official statistics capture changes in productivity growth and how any lags or limitations might impact monetary policy. For example, in the 1990s, some believed that low measures of productivity weren’t capturing … Cont
On June 25, 2026, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released real GDP data for all US states for the first quarter of 2026. The FRED map above shows the annualized growth rates from the previous quarter: Red denotes contraction (less … Continue reading →