Methodology

What HRTD holds

For every U.S. series, HRTD holds the first print of each period — the value the agency published for that period the first time, before any revision — together with the day it was released.

How a first print is chosen

• A period's first print is its earliest published value, counted only when the period was newer than everything published before it.
• In a series' first available version, the newest period counts only if its publication lag matches the series' own later first-print lags.

Release days

• A release day is never estimated or interpolated. Every day comes from a dated record: the agency's own record first, then the dated release, then the publication record, then same-day newspaper reports.
• Where an agency's own record and ALFRED disagree, the agency's record wins.
• A first print whose release day has not yet been found is shown without a day ("not yet found") until the record is found.

Sources and history

• Series come from ALFRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) and from older real-time sources, including the Philadelphia Fed Real-Time Data Set for Macroeconomists, BLS CES vintage files and FRED-MD/QD.
• A series stretched back with older sources is one continuous series; the source is listed on its page.
• Numbers read from scanned pages enter only after validation (checked against neighbours, another compilation and an independent reading).

Reading the charts

Values are shown exactly as published. When an agency changes a series' base year, units or definition, the first prints shift level at that point; this is part of the real-time record, not an error. Each chart can be plotted against the period or against the release day.

Organization

Series are filed by economic function (28 functions ordered by economic relevance), then agency, release and frequency.