We have added two new features to the FRED API, a web service that allows developers to write programs that retrieve economic data.

First, all API requests can now output to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). This is in addition to Extensible Markup Language (XML) which remains the default file type. An example application from an external developer that uses the API and new JSON format can be found here.

Second, 10 new FRED tags requests have been added to the API. All FRED series are assigned tags such as “GDP” to enhance search and allow users to subset results. You can now get these same features in your custom FRED applications through the API.