Economic Data as Snapshots in Time

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has initiated two new projects, FRASER and ALFRED. These two projects share one goal: to provide better access to historical economic data. But the projects differ in their audiences and uses. FRASER is an image archive of economic statistical publications, from government or near-government sources (aka the Fed). ALFRED is a machinereadable archive that allows researchers to pull real-time data in handy formats such as Excel. These two projects build on FRED. FRED, which stands for Federal Reserve Economic Data, is our most heavily-used data product. FRED offers over 3,000 economic and financial time series drawn from government and commercial sources.