fred-economic-data

FRED Economic Data Access

Overview

Access comprehensive economic data through FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), a database maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis containing over 800,000 economic time series from over 100 sources.

Key capabilities:

• Query economic time series data (GDP, unemployment, inflation, interest rates)
• Search and discover series by keywords, tags, and categories
• Access historical data and vintage (revision) data via ALFRED
• Retrieve release schedules and data publication dates
• Map regional economic data with GeoFRED
• Apply data transformations (percent change, log, etc.)

API Key Setup

Required: All FRED API requests require an API key.

1. Create an account at https://fredaccount.stlouisfed.org
2. Log in and request an API key through the account portal
3. Set as environment variable:

export FRED_API_KEY="your_32_character_key_here"

Or in Python:

import os
os.environ["FRED_API_KEY"] = "your_key_here"

Quick Start

Using the FREDQuery Class

from scripts.fred_query import FREDQuery

# Initialize with API key
fred = FREDQuery(api_key="YOUR_KEY")  # or uses FRED_API_KEY env var

# Get GDP data
gdp = fred.get_series("GDP")
print(f"Latest GDP: {gdp['observations'][-1]}")

# Get unemployment rate observations
unemployment = fred.get_observations("UNRATE", limit=12)
for obs in unemployment["observations"]:
    print(f"{obs['date']}: {obs['value']}%")

# Search for inflation series
inflation_series = fred.search_series("consumer price index")
for s in inflation_series["seriess"][:5]:
    print(f"{s['id']}: {s['title']}")

Direct API Calls

import requests
import os

API_KEY = os.environ.get("FRED_API_KEY")
BASE_URL = "https://api.stlouisfed.org/fred"

# Get series observations
response = requests.get(
    f"{BASE_URL}/series/observations",
    params={
        "api_key": API_KEY,
        "series_id": "GDP",
        "file_type": "json"
    }
)
data = response.json()