FRED Economic Data

The FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) module provides access to macroeconomic time series from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for Babylon’s simulation systems.

Overview

FRED is integrated into Babylon to provide:

Real wage calculations: CPI and nominal hourly earnings
Reserve army metrics: National, state, and industry unemployment rates
Fiscal indicators: Federal debt and M2 money supply
Imperial bribe data: PPP-adjusted GDP per capita

All data is stored in data/duckdb/marxist-data-3NF.duckdb (the normalized 3NF database) alongside Census, QCEW, Trade, and Productivity data.

Setup

Register for a FRED API key at https://fredaccount.stlouisfed.org/apikeys
Set the environment variable:
```
export FRED_API_KEY=your_key_here
```
Load the data:
```
mise run data:fred
```

Series Catalog

National Series (8)

Series ID	Description	Marxian Use
CPIAUCSL	Consumer Price Index	Real wage calculation (adjusts nominal wages for inflation)
AHETPI	Average Hourly Earnings	Nominal wage input for variable capital (v)
UNRATE	Unemployment Rate	Reserve army of labor proxy
GFDEBTN	Federal Debt	Fiscal trilemma modeling
GINIALLRF	Gini Index	Class tension initialization
M2SL	M2 Money Stock	Fictitious capital proxy
PPPTTLUSA618NUPN	PPP over GDP (lags 2-3 years)	Unequal exchange calculation
RGDPCHUSA625NUPN	PPP GDP/Capita (lags 2-3 years)	Imperial bribe / superwages

State Unemployment (51)

State-level unemployment rates for all 50 states plus DC using the LAUST series pattern: LAUST{FIPS}0000000000003A

Example: LAUST120000000000003A for Florida (FIPS 12)

Industry Unemployment (8)

Major sector unemployment rates that join with QCEW NAICS codes:

Construction (NAICS 23)
Manufacturing (NAICS 31-33)
Transportation & Utilities (NAICS 48-49)
Information (NAICS 51)
Financial Activities (NAICS 52-53)
Professional & Business Services (NAICS 54-56)
Education & Health Services (NAICS 61-62)
Leisure & Hospitality (NAICS 71-72)

Usage

Command Line

# Load all FRED data for 2022 (default)
mise run data:fred

Python API

from babylon.data.fred.loader_3nf import FredLoader
from babylon.data.loader_base import LoaderConfig
from babylon.data.reference.database import get_normalized_session_factory
from babylon.data.reference.schema import (
    FactFredNational,
    DimFredSeries,
    DimTime,
)

# Load FRED data for 1990-2024
config = LoaderConfig(fred_start_year=1990, fred_end_year=2024)
loader = FredLoader(config)

session_factory = get_normalized_session_factory()
with session_factory() as session:
    stats = loader.load(session, reset=True)
    print(f"Loaded {stats.facts_loaded['fact_fred_national']} national records")

# Query CPI data
with session_factory() as session:
    cpi = (
        session.query(FactFredNational, DimTime)
        .join(DimFredSeries, FactFredNational.series_id == DimFredSeries.series_id)
        .join(DimTime, FactFredNational.time_id == DimTime.time_id)
        .filter(DimFredSeries.series_code == "CPIAUCSL")
        .order_by(DimTime.year, DimTime.month)
        .all()
    )

    for fact, time in cpi:
        print(f"{time.year}-{time.month:02d}: {fact.value}")

SQL Queries

Calculate Real Wages

SELECT
    f_wage.value / (f_cpi.value / 100) as real_hourly_wage,
    f_wage.date
FROM fred_national f_wage
JOIN fred_series s_wage ON f_wage.series_id = s_wage.id
JOIN fred_national f_cpi ON f_wage.date = f_cpi.date
JOIN fred_series s_cpi ON f_cpi.series_id = s_cpi.id
WHERE s_wage.series_id = 'AHETPI'
  AND s_cpi.series_id = 'CPIAUCSL'
  AND f_wage.year = 2022;

Join State Unemployment with QCEW Employment

SELECT
    fs.name as state,
    fu.unemployment_rate,
    SUM(qa.employment) as total_employment
FROM fred_state_unemployment fu
JOIN fred_states fs ON fu.state_id = fs.id
JOIN qcew_areas qa ON qa.area_fips LIKE fs.fips_code || '%'
WHERE fu.year = 2022
GROUP BY fs.name;

Database Schema

Dimension Tables

fred_series: Metadata for each time series (series_id, title, units, frequency)
fred_states: US states with FIPS codes for state-level joins
fred_industries: Industry sectors with NAICS codes for QCEW joins

Fact Tables

fred_national: National series observations (value, date, year, month, quarter)
fred_state_unemployment: State-level unemployment rates by month
fred_industry_unemployment: Industry-level unemployment rates by month