July 31, 2017

You Want Data? FRED to the Rescue.

Austin Frakt posted an old New York Times chart of personal expenditures, and a reader has a question:


The answer, as it is so often, is FRED, the economic data aggregator from the St. Louis Fed. Here it is:

When I use data from FRED, I always include it as a source. Why? Because it’s a great service, and deserves to get more credit. They don’t cover literally everything—for some reason, the Census Bureau doesn’t share its data, for example—but they cover a helluva lot. And once you learn how to use it, you have fast, convenient access to data from dozens of agencies. I probably could have dug up this chart over at the BEA, but it would have taken me a while. FRED made it the work of a few minutes.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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