Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) - Formula Reference

Please note: "This product uses the FREDĀ® API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis."

There are two types of FRED formulas: historical formulas which return a time series of points and single point formulas:

Historical Time Series Formulas

The FRED historical time series formulas return a series of dates and values.

These formulas are standard Excel array formulas and return a series of dates (optional) and values. The data type of the value depends on the formula used, some are actual values, others are changes or percentage changes.

Here is the formula for returning the quarterly change in US GDP, and from this single formula you can easily create a dynamic chart:

FRED Excel Price Feed formula for United States GDP quarterly change

All of the historical time series formulas use the same parameters.

For example, here is the formula to return the values of a FRED time series:

=EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback(seriesID, requestedNumPoints, order, hideDateColumn)

The input parameters are:

Parameter Optional Description
Series ID No The FRED Series ID for the data series
Requested Number Of Points No The number of data points to return
Order Yes The order that the data will be displayed;
either "DESC" for Descending (latest first) or "ASC" for Ascending (oldest first).
The default is descending
Hide Date Column Yes Whether to return the date column or just the values, either 1 to hide or 0 to show. The default is show.

The output columns are:

Output Column Description
Date The date/time of the value (not returned if hide date column is specified)
Value The value

EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback

This formula populates your spreadsheet with a FRED historical time series of values for the specified series and number of period back from today:

=EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback(seriesID, requestedNumPoints, order, hideDateColumn)


EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback.Change

This formula populates your spreadsheet with a FRED historical time series showing change for the specified series and number of period back from today:

=EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback.Change(seriesID, requestedNumPoints, order, hideDateColumn)


EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback.PercentChange

This formula populates your spreadsheet with a FRED historical time series showing percent change for the specified series and number of period back from today:

=EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback.PercentChange(seriesID, requestedNumPoints, order, hideDateColumn)


EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback.Change.YearAgo

This formula populates your spreadsheet with a FRED historical time series showing change from a year ago for the specified series and number of period back from today:

=EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback.Change.YearAgo(seriesID, requestedNumPoints, order, hideDateColumn)


EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback.PercentChange.YearAgo

This formula populates your spreadsheet with a FRED historical time series showing percent change from a year ago for the specified series and number of period back from today:

=EPF.FRED.HistoricLookback.PercentChange.YearAgo(seriesID, requestedNumPoints, order, hideDateColumn)


Single Data Point Formulas

These formulas just look at the latest data point for the specified FRED series.

They all require just one parameter, the FRED data seried ID, and they all just return one value.

EPF.FRED.LatestDate

This formula populates your spreadsheet with the latest FRED date for the specified series:

=EPF.FRED.LatestDate(seriesID)


EPF.FRED.Last

This formula populates your spreadsheet with the latest FRED value for the specified series:

=EPF.FRED.Last(seriesID)


EPF.FRED.Last.Change

This formula populates your spreadsheet with the latest FRED change for the specified series:

=EPF.FRED.Last.Change(seriesID)


EPF.FRED.Last.PercentChange

This formula populates your spreadsheet with the latest FRED % change for the specified series:

=EPF.FRED.Last.PercentChange(seriesID)


EPF.FRED.Last.Change.YearAgo

This formula populates your spreadsheet with the latest FRED change from a year ago for the specified series:

=EPF.FRED.Last.Change.YearAgo(seriesID)


EPF.FRED.Last.PercentChange.YearAgo

This formula populates your spreadsheet with the latest FRED % change from a year ago for the specified series:

=EPF.FRED.Last.PercentChange.YearAgo(seriesID)