Economic Data gives you direct access to US government statistical databases — the kind of authoritative data that economists, journalists, and researchers rely on. Ask "what's the median household income in zip code 90210?" or "show me how the federal funds rate has changed over 5 years" and get precise, sourced answers.
It connects to four major data sources: the Census Bureau's ACS surveys for demographics at zip-code and county level, the Federal Reserve's FRED database with over 800,000 economic time series, the Bureau of Labor Statistics for employment and wage data, and Data.gov for hundreds of thousands of additional government datasets.
What you can do
- census_lookup — ACS demographic data by state, county, zip code, metro area, or census tract (population, income, housing, education)
- fred_search — search the FRED database by keyword to find economic time series
- fred_series — fetch historical data for any FRED series (GDP, FEDFUNDS, UNRATE, MORTGAGE30US, and more)
- bls_series — BLS employment data: unemployment rate, CPI, nonfarm payrolls, and wages
- dataset_search — search 400,000+ Data.gov datasets by keyword
Who it's for
Economists, journalists, policy researchers, real estate analysts, and anyone building dashboards or reports that need reliable government statistics.
How to use it
- For geographic demographics, call census_lookup with variable codes and a geography type like "zip" or "county".
- For macro time series, call fred_search to find the right series ID, then fred_series to pull the data.
- For labor market data, call bls_series with the series ID (e.g. LNS14000000 for unemployment).
Getting started
Connect your FRED API key for full access to historical economic data. The Census and BLS skills work without a key.
