The Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED®) platform is globally renowned as a massive repository of authoritative macroeconomic data. Series such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Consumer Price Index (CPIAUCSL), and the Unemployment Rate (UNRATE) appear in financial news headlines almost daily. Still, beyond these familiar indicators, FRED publishes more than 800,000 individual time series, many of which receive little public attention and are not tied to major press releases. Popularity, however, does not equate to insight potential.
For a curious mind interested in exploring this enormous data ecosystem, the obvious question becomes: where do you begin? One practical starting point is FRED sources.
Sources in FRED
As of the writing of this post the FRED system lists 499 sources all indexed with a source ID. Using RESERVE to list these is as easy as:
reserve source list
+-----+----------------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| ID | NAME | LINK |
+-----+----------------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+
| 1 | Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US) | https://www.federalreserve.gov |
| 3 | Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia | https://www.philadelphiafed.org/ |
| 4 | Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis | http://www.stlouisfed.org/ |
. . . . .
| 499 | Barrero, Jose Maria | https://www.jmbarrero.com |
+-----+----------------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+Using a source as a starting point, users can unpack what releases are associated with each source and which series are associated with a release. FRED’s data is organized in a
source -> release -> series
hierarchy. To illustrate the point, we are going to use source 499–economics professor and researcher Jose Maria Barrero. Before exploring the data, let’s have a real world understanding of Professor Barrero and the work with which he is associated.
Who is Jose Maria Barrero?
Jose Maria Barrero is an Associate Professor of Finance (with tenure) at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City and an applied economist whose research focuses on finance, macroeconomics, and labor markets. He earned degrees in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and completed both his MA and PhD in Economics at Stanford University. Professor Barrero is widely recognized for his research on remote and hybrid work, collaborating with Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom and Hoover Institution economist Steven J. Davis on influential work-from-home and labor market studies.
A Closer Look at the “Remote & Hybrid Work” Theme
Professor Barrero currently serves as one of nine members of The Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA) research team. Per the SWAA website:
The Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA) is a monthly survey of between 2,500 to 10,000 US residents aged between 20 and 64. We currently compile two versions of the data: (1) restricting to persons who earned $10,000+ in the prior year, going back to May 2020; (2) with no earnings restriction, going back to early 2022.
Within FRED, the release associated with this research is titled “Select Time Series Based on the U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA).” The release currently contains 20 point-in-time series related to remote work, labor market expectations, and working arrangements.
Examples of series titles within the release include:
| Series ID | Series Title |
|---|---|
| WFHCOVIDMATQUESTION | Work from Home Rate |
| WFHCOVIDFRACMATWOMEN | Work from Home Rate: Women |
| WFHCOVIDFRACMATMEN | Work from Home Rate: Men |
| WFHFRACMATGOVERNMENT | Work from Home Rate: Government, Wage and Salary Employees |
With this high-level overview, let’s use RESERVE to examine these details.
RESERVE Source Unpacking
The first order of business is using RESERVE to see releases associated with Professor Barrero. Per the output below, he is associated with exactly 1 release:
reserve source releases 499
+------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------+-------------------------------+
| ID | NAME | PRESS RELEASE | LINK |
+------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------+-------------------------------+
| 1033 | Select time series based on the U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA) | No | https://wfhresearch.com/data/ |
+------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------+-------------------------------+
Note that this release contains a URL to the SWAA website. Furthermore, the entry has a value of “No” for Press Release meaning that FRED does not issue public press notifications for updates on this release.
To understand which series are related to this release, we will use the RESERVE release series command. The result is a collection of 20 series: 6 contain monthly observations and 14 contain annual observations.
reserve release series 1033
+---------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+------+----------------------+------------------------+
| ID | TITLE | FREQ | UNITS | LAST UPDATED |
+---------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+------+----------------------+------------------------+
| FULLONSITECURR | All Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers: Working ... | M | % | 2026-05-05 11:10:38-05 |
| FULLREMOTECURR | All Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers: Working ... | M | % | 2026-05-05 11:10:37-05 |
| HYBRIDCURR | All Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers: Working ... | M | % | 2026-05-05 11:10:38-05 |
| WFHCOVIDFRACMATMEN | Work from Home Rate: Men | M | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:43-05 |
| WFHCOVIDFRACMATWOMEN | Work from Home Rate: Women | M | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:40-05 |
| WFHCOVIDMATQUESTION | Work from Home Rate | M | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:36-05 |
| WFHFRACMATARTSENTERTAIN | Work from Home Rate: Arts & Entertainment, Wage... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:44-05 |
| WFHFRACMATEDUCATION | Work from Home Rate: Education, Wage and Salary... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:43-05 |
| WFHFRACMATFINANCEINSURANC | Work from Home Rate: Finance & Insurance, Wage ... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:38-05 |
| WFHFRACMATGOVERNMENT | Work from Home Rate: Government, Wage and Salar... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:42-05 |
| WFHFRACMATHEALTHCARE | Work from Home Rate: Health Care & Social Assis... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:37-05 |
| WFHFRACMATHOSPITAILITYFOO | Work from Home Rate: Hospitality & Food Service... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:41-05 |
| WFHFRACMATINFORMATION | Work from Home Rate: Information, Wage and Sala... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:44-05 |
| WFHFRACMATMANUFACTURING | Work from Home Rate: Manufacturing, Wage and Sa... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:41-05 |
| WFHFRACMATPROFBUSSERVICES | Work from Home Rate: Professional & Business Se... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:39-05 |
| WFHFRACMATREALESTATE | Work from Home Rate: Real Estate, Wage and Sala... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:41-05 |
| WFHFRACMATRETAIL | Work from Home Rate: Retail Trade, Wage and Sal... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:42-05 |
| WFHFRACMATTRANSPWAREHOUSI | Work from Home Rate: Transportation & Warehousi... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:44-05 |
| WFHFRACMATUTILITIES | Work from Home Rate: Utilities, Wage and Salary... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:42-05 |
| WFHFRACMATWHOLESALE | Work from Home Rate: Wholesale Trade, Wage and ... | A | % of Full Paid Wo... | 2026-05-05 11:10:43-05 |
+---------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+------+----------------------+------------------------+Is Barrero the Only Source?
We found Release 1033 and related Series through exploring source 499–Jose Maria Barrero. In FRED, however, releases can have multiple sources associated with them and sources can be associated with multiple releases. In the case of series related to SWAA, there are actually 3 sources. In addition to Professor Barrero, Steven J. Davis (Source 104), and Nick Bloom (Source 105) are associated with the series associated with the SWAA Release.
reserve obs latest FULLONSITECURR
+----------------+------------+--------------+
| SERIES | DATE | LATEST VALUE |
+----------------+------------+--------------+
| FULLONSITECURR | 2026-04-01 | 62.93 |
+----------------+------------+--------------+
Sources: Barrero, Jose Maria; Davis, Steven J.; Bloom, Nick via FREDThough many releases have exactly one source, this can never be assumed.
Why Explore A Niche Series?
Niche series provide context. Broad labor market indicators such as wage growth and employment levels are important, but they do not tell the entire story of how work itself is changing.
The Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA) adds an additional layer of insight to traditional labor data by helping explain where and how that labor force is working. When combined with broader economic indicators, these datasets can help illuminate trends in commercial real estate demand, regional population shifts, workforce flexibility, and changing employer expectations.
Whether you are an economist, investor, policymaker, or hiring manager evaluating onsite versus remote work strategies, niche datasets like SWAA can provide valuable context that traditional headline indicators often miss.
Why Explore with RESERVE?
There are a number of ways in the modern world for exploring macroeconomic data consolidated on FRED. Options include, the FRED site itself, search engines like Google, answer engines like ChatGPT or Claude, and source websites like the Bureau of Labor Statistics or SWAA. However, RESERVE is a command-line interface designed to retrieve tabular data amongst other available formats. This allows the macroeconomics curious a very concise view of FRED’s 499 sources. With a source ID, it is fast and simple to explore Releases and Series associated with those releases. From there, data can be retrieved in comma-separated format for further work in Excel or in JSON/JSONL format for manipulation in Python. One can even go directly to the FRED website itself armed with new source, release, and series knowledge and use their GUI web tools to further explore. This explanation is limited to a single Release view of FRED data. Things get even more interesting when using RESERVE to retrieve data from series associated with multiple releases.
Combining Series
One of RESERVE’s powerful features is that it can download multiple series in a single command.
$ reserve obs get --start 2022-01-01 --freq annual PAYEMS CES0500000003 WFHCOVIDMATQUESTION
+---------------------+------------+--------+
| SERIES | DATE | VALUE |
+---------------------+------------+--------+
| PAYEMS | 2022-01-01 | 152549 |
| PAYEMS | 2023-01-01 | 155895 |
| PAYEMS | 2024-01-01 | 157694 |
| PAYEMS | 2025-01-01 | 158439 |
| PAYEMS | 2026-01-01 | . |
| CES0500000003 | 2022-01-01 | 32.26 |
| CES0500000003 | 2023-01-01 | 33.70 |
| CES0500000003 | 2024-01-01 | 35.06 |
| CES0500000003 | 2025-01-01 | 36.44 |
| CES0500000003 | 2026-01-01 | . |
| WFHCOVIDMATQUESTION | 2022-01-01 | 30.39 |
| WFHCOVIDMATQUESTION | 2023-01-01 | 28.81 |
| WFHCOVIDMATQUESTION | 2024-01-01 | 27.59 |
| WFHCOVIDMATQUESTION | 2025-01-01 | 27.12 |
| WFHCOVIDMATQUESTION | 2026-01-01 | . |
+---------------------+------------+--------+
Sources by series:
- PAYEMS: Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED
- CES0500000003: Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED
- WFHCOVIDMATQUESTION: Barrero, Jose Maria; Davis, Steven J.; Bloom, Nick via FREDThis single RESERVE command combines two Bureau of Labor Statistics series with data from the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (SWAA) to compare employment growth, wage growth, and work-from-home trends after the pandemic.
The results are striking. From 2022 onward:
- nonfarm employment continued to rise,
- wages steadily increased,
- yet remote work remained persistently elevated.
Early in the pandemic, many economists and employers expected work from home to disappear once the labor market normalized and offices reopened. Instead, the data suggests the opposite: even as employment recovered and wage growth remained strong, remote work stabilized at levels far above its pre-2020 baseline.
The important story is not that remote work declined from its pandemic peak — it is that it stopped declining. By 2024–2025, work from home appears to have settled into a new long-run equilibrium rather than reverting to pre-pandemic norms.
And that is where exploring The Source becomes especially valuable. Once we move beyond the most commonly cited FRED indicators, we begin to uncover datasets that capture how businesses and workers are adapting in real time. Widely followed economic indicators remain essential, but when combined with newer and more specialized datasets, FRED becomes more than a repository of statistics—it becomes a platform for discovering how the economy is actually changing.