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Government Data and Statistics

About this Tab

Includes some source that overlap with other tabs on this page, and much that overlaps with (is taken directly from) the Economic Sciences subject library guide, which you should visit and review before coming back to this guide if you still need to.

United States

Major Sources

@ALFRED: Archival Federal Reserve Economic Data. St. Louis Fed.  Retrieves vintage versions of economic data that were available on specific dates in history. 

  • The St Louis Fed website has lots of other good economics resources
  • See below under FRED for current US and international time series datasets and FRASIER for resources from its digital library of U.S. economic, financial, and banking history—particularly the history of the Federal Reserve System (note: a lot is in PDF format).

American Time Use Survey. Provides statistics and graphical data on the amount of time people in the U.S. spend on various activities. 

Beige Book. Federal Reserve Board of Governors.  A summary of commentary on economic conditions by Federal Reserve districts, published 8 times a year. 

Bureau of Economic Analysis, United States Department of Commerce. National and international accounts statistics. 

Bureau of Labor Statistics Databases & Tables. Provides access to data from the BLS including inflation and prices, employment, unemployment, pay and benefits, productivity, and more. 

Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS): Includes measures of establishment openings and closings, firm startups, job creations and destruction by firm size, age, and industrial sector, and several other statistics on business dynamics; provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Business Employment Dynamics. Statistics generated from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, or ES-202, program, these quarterly data series consist of gross job gains and gross job losses statistics from 1992 forward. 

CASSIDI. Competitive Analysis and Structure Source Instrument for Depository Institutions - St. Louis Federal Reserve.  Provides banking competitive analysis information for the United States; institution and market information and "what if" analysis. 

Economic Indicators. U.S. Census Bureau.  Economic Indicators.  Monthly publication prepared by the Council of Economic Advisors for the Joint Economic Committee.  Leading Economic Indicators. The Conference Board. 

Employment Research Data Center. W.E. Upjohn Institute. Provides free, downloadable data from many research and evaluation projects sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Labor. 

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Provides data on specific banks and the banking industry. 

Federal Reserve Board. Data Sources for Discontinued Statistical Supplement to the Federal Reserve Bulletin. Links to statistics provided by the Federal Reserve. 

Reserve Bulletin. Links to statistics provided by the Federal Reserve.

FRASER: Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research. St. Louis Fed.  Provides links to scanned images of historical economic statistic publications. 

FRED: Federal Reserve Economic Data. St. Louis Fed.  A database of over 13.000 U.S. economic time series. 

IPUMSusa. Integrated Public Microdata Series. Census microdata for social and economic research; available free

  • See the broader IPUMS site which includes additional population, health, environmental, GIS, time use and educational microdata.

Statistical Abstracts Series.  The U.S. Census Bureau provides PDF copies of the Statistical Abstract of the United States volumes from 2012 back to 1878...

  • But you may find this WSU subscription version better to use: Statistical Abstract of the United States (ProQuest) - is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic conditions of the United States. The online version includes monthly updates to tables, deep searching at the line-item level, powerful facets for narrowing search results, image and spreadsheet versions of all current and historical tables, along with links to provider sites.

U.S. Economic Indicators. Provides economic information on gross domestic product, income, employment, production, business activity, prices, money, credit, security markets, Federal finance, and international statistics from April 1995 - present. 

U.S. Economy at a Glance. This site, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides easy access to U.S. economic information. 

U.S. National Agricultural Statistics Service.  Data and Statistics. Interactive, online database of U.S. agricultural statistics at the county, state and U.S. levels.  Covers crops and plants, livestock and animals, demographics, economics, and environmental aspects of U.S. agriculture. 

USA Trade Online. Provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, USA Trade Online is a dynamic data tool that gives users access to current and cumulative U.S. export and import data.  Users must create an account which is free.

Economic Data Tools

DataFerrett. A data mining and extraction tool that allows the user to select variables and recode them as needed. Runs on an application icon the user installs on the desktop. 

List of Free Statistical Software

 

US Census Geocoder - Census geocoder provides interactive & programmatic (REST) access to users interested in matching addresses to geographic locations and entities containing those addresses.

 

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For fun, an academic lineage tool - play six degrees of Kevin Bacon with economists and their theories...

RePEc Genealogy. Documents, within the field of economics, who was a student of whom, when and where. 

Data Watchdogs

FedSpending.org. A project of OMB Watch, a nongovernmental agency, this site provides data on contracts, assistance, recovery, and other forms of U.S. government spending.  Information is available by state, congressional district, contracting agency, product/service, or other options. 

Shadow Government Statistics: Analysis Behind and Beyond Government Economic Reporting  - requires a subscription, but provides some free content.

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