ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Federal Reserve Economic Data

The Federal Reserve Economic Data, or FRED for short, is like a big library for information about the economy. It has lots of charts and graphs that show how things like jobs and prices and the stock market have changed over time.


Have you ever seen a graph that goes up and down? FRED has lots of those! Each line on the graph shows how something in the economy has changed over time. For example, one line might show how many people have jobs each month, and another line might show how much things cost at the store.


The people who run FRED are really good at putting lots of different kinds of information together in one place so we can look at it and understand how things are going in the economy. This can be really helpful for people who make decisions about things like how much to pay workers or how to invest their money.


So, the Federal Reserve Economic Data is like a big book with lots of pictures and graphs that helps us understand how the economy is doing.