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Information Services

Photo of staff and guests from a 2017 research information services conference

As part of its work to expand the frontier of economic knowledge, the St. Louis Fed's Research Division provides many online information services to the public. From our flagship data tool FRED® to tools for educators and librarians, we strive to be a go-to source for economic information. Read more about the history of FRED and our other services in the 2018 and 2016 annual reports.

Looking for information on our economists and their research? Try Research publications, working papers, or the Bank's "On the Economy" blog.




Our Services

FRED® Data

FRED, your trusted data source since 1991, is a data aggregator bringing together more than 750,000 regional, national, and international data series from over 100 different sources. With ready access to this wide range of series and sources in one place, users can get a good picture of both U.S. and global economic data. FRED is used by policymakers, researchers, students, teachers, business professionals, journalists, and anyone who’s interested in accessing data to make informed decisions. 

Access FRED data on the web, in the mobile apps, through the Excel® add-in, or via the API. Create or access topical dashboards and data lists that update automatically when new data is released; create, customize, download, and share maps of FRED data from the U.S. county to international level;view a calendar of data releases; and subscribe to the newsletter for the latest data additions, news, and updates. Interested in learning more about how FRED works? Listen to this recent podcast episode on the FRED team's commitment to innovation. 


  • FRED Blog
    The FRED Blog takes a closer look at individual data series and shows how economic questions can be answered with FRED time series data. Written by the economists and staff of the Research Division, the FRED Blog strives to make data accessible to a wide audience.
  • ALFRED
    Economic data revises often. With ALFRED you can retrieve, graph, and compare initial "vintage" versions of economic data that were available on specific dates in history.
  • FRED in the Classroom Newsletter
    The FRED in the Classroom newsletter is a partnership between our Economic Education and FRED teams to provide instruction on teaching with data. Eight times a year, FRED in the Classroom shows you how to teach with FRED graphs, GeoFRED maps, quizzes, and links to data resources. Subscribe to the newsletter in your FRED user account.


Econ Lowdown®

The Economic Education team provides free economics and personal finance curriculum materials for use in elementary, middle-school, high-school, and college classrooms in the award-winning teacher online portal, econlowdown.org and through LMS integration. Create online classrooms, build a syllabus using our lesson plans, videos, online modules, and activities, and monitor student progress in virtual classrooms. Teachers can also subscribe to the newsletter for regular news and updates.


FRASER® Digital Library

FRASER, a unique digital library of economic and financial history, offers access to more than half a million historical data, research, and policy documents to users around the world. FRASER materials are digitized from the collections of our partners, including the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the FDIC, and the libraries and archives of the Federal Reserve System. Subscribe to FRASER's monthly newsletter for news and updates.


Data Literacy

Our Library Services and Economic Education teams have developed a fully asynchronous online professional development program on data literacy for librarians. This program focuses on seven foundational data literacy competencies and uses FRED data to provide opportunities for hands-on learning.



Federal Reserve History


FederalReserveHistory.org serves as a gateway to the history of the Federal Reserve for educators, students, and the general public. Originally created as part of the commemoration of the Federal Reserve centennial in 2013-2014, the site strives to make the vast amount of historical material on the Fed more findable, easier to understand, and easier to use, in order to provide greater transparency into change and continuity in our nation's central bank over the last 100 years.



Fed in Print


Fed in Print is a central catalog of publications of the Federal Reserve System. Regularly updated by librarians and publications specialists and maintained by the St. Louis Fed, FiP provides an easy index to research and information publications, speeches by Federal Reserve officials, and more. Users can search the catalog on the web and subscribe to RSS feeds for all Fed institutions, or just a subset.



8th District Economy

Dashboards of comparative state, county, and metro economic data for areas across the US are made available by the Regional Economics team, who also produce and disseminate Eighth District economic data and research like the Beige Book.