Categories in FRED®
What is a Category?
In FRED®, a category is a way of organizing economic data series into a hierarchical structure.
Categories group related series into broad economic topics and then divide those topics into narrower subtopics.
Categories organize data by subject area such as:
- National Accounts
- Money, Banking, and Finance
- Population, Employment, and Labor Markets
- Prices
- International Data
- U.S. Regional Data
Unlike tags, which describe attributes of a series, categories place series within a topic-based tree.
A category may contain subcategories, and each subcategory may contain additional levels beneath it.
Categories function as a navigation structure.
Why Categories Matter in Economic Analysis
Categories allow economists to:
- Browse economic data by subject area
- Discover related indicators within a domain
- Move from broad topics to more specific measures
- Understand how data are grouped conceptually
- Locate series when the exact series name or ID is unknown
Because FRED contains hundreds of thousands of series, categories provide a structured way to explore the database.
Categories vs. Tags
| Category | Tag |
|---|---|
| Hierarchical | Flat |
| Organize by domain | Describe attributes |
| Example: “Prices” → “Consumer Price Indexes” | Example: “Monthly”, “Seasonally Adjusted”, “Japan” |
| Usage: Topic navigation | Usage: Attribute filtering |
Example: Inflation
Consider a researcher studying inflation.
They may begin by browsing the Prices category, then move into a subcategory such as Consumer Price Indexes.
This helps them identify:
- Headline inflation measures
- Core inflation measures
- Producer price measures
- Related price indicators
A category helps the user find the relevant family of series before applying more specific filters.
Example: Labor Market Analysis
Suppose an economist wants to study unemployment.
They might navigate through categories such as:
- Population, Employment, and Labor Markets
- Employment and Unemployment
- Unemployment Rate
This allows the researcher to move from a broad labor-market domain to a specific indicator type.
Categories are especially useful when the user knows the topic of interest but does not yet know which exact series is needed.
How Economists Use Categories in Practice
In research workflows, categories are often used to:
- Explore unfamiliar economic domains
- Identify major indicators within a topic area
- Build initial data collections for analysis
- Understand how FRED organizes macroeconomic subjects
- Navigate from general concepts to specific datasets
Categories are particularly useful when:
- Beginning a new research project
- Surveying available data in a field
- Teaching students how economic data are organized
- Searching for indicators without knowing exact series names
Summary
Categories in FRED are hierarchical topic groupings used to organize economic time series.
They allow economists to:
- Browse data by economic subject
- Discover related indicators
- Navigate from broad topics to narrower concepts
- Explore the structure of the FRED database
While tags provide flexible attribute-based filtering, categories provide subject-based structure.
In large economic datasets, categories are essential for organized discovery.
Explore Categories in RESERVE CLI