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FRED Adds Consumer Expenditure Surveys from Bureau of Labor Statistics

FRED has added about 18,500 new series from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) program. The CE program provides data on expenditures, income, and demographic characteristics of consumers in the United States, which are primarily used to revise the relative importance of goods and services in the market basket of the consumer price index.

The CE surveys collect data that fall into one of the following major expenditure categories:

  • alcoholic beverages
  • apparel and services
  • cash contributions
  • education
  • entertainment
  • food
  • healthcare
  • housing
  • miscellaneous
  • personal care products and services
  • personal insurance and pensions
  • reading
  • tobacco products and smoking supplies
  • transportation

The expenditure data and demographic and income information are provided in a variety of formats, including tables with estimates by region, income, age, race, education, occupation, and various other characteristics of the household or reference person. CE also provides tables that cross-tabulate using two characteristics (e.g., age and income) to allow users to further analyze the spending behavior for a particular subset of the population.

Explore these tables in FRED. For more details and definitions, visit the source’s Frequently Asked Questions.

Posted in FRED Announcements