Economics -- Selected Statistical Sources

Bureau of Economic Analysis

BEA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is the nation's economic accountant, preparing estimates that illuminate key national, international, and regional aspects of the U.S. economy.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (US) Data Page

BLS is the principal data gathering agency of the US. federal government in the broad field of labor economics. It derives its data from voluntary responses to surveys of businesses and households conducted by BLS staff, by the Bureau of the Census (on a contract basis), or in conjunction with state and federal agencies. Data series are available in machine-readable form directly from BLS.

The BLS web site includes Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, Nonfarm Payroll Statistics from the Current Employment Statistics, National Employment, Hours, and Earnings, State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings, Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Geographic Profile, Consumer Price Index, Department Store Inventory Price Index, Producer Price Index, International Price Index, Special Export Comparison Index, Compensation & Working Conditions, Developments in Labor-Management Relations, Collective Bargaining Agreements, Work Stoppage Data, Employee Benefits Survey, Employment Cost Index, Safety and Health Statistics, Occupational Injury and Illness Rates (1987 SIC Codes), Quarterly Labor Productivity, Industry Labor Productivity Index, Federal Government Productivity Index, International Labor Statistics. Also includes "Economy at a Glance," news releases, and more. There is also a direct link to the time series gopher site.

Census of Governments (Census Bureau)
Davis Reference Row 11
IRSS (Institute for Research in Social Science) (basement of Manning Hall)
Some publications are available via The Census Bureau or
The Census Bureau Government Reports

"Data are obtained on government organizations, finances, and employment. Organizations' data include location, type, and characteristics of local governments and officials. Finances and employment data are the same as in comparable annual surveys and include revenue, expenditures, debt, assets, employees, payroll, and benefits." Geographical areas include state, county, city, township, special district, and school district.

Consolidated Federal Funds Reports (Census Bureau)
Davis Reference Electronic Resource C3.266/3: (1983-)
Government Information Sharing Project or
Censtats

"Data were obtained from Federal government agencies. The CFFR covers Federal expenditures or obligations for the following categories: grants, salaries and wages, procurement contracts, direct payments for individuals, other direct payments, direct loans, guaranteed or insured loans, and insurance. Dollar amounts reported represent either actual expenditures or obligations. Data were obtained from Federal government agencies." Geographical areas: state, county, and subcounty.

Datastream International
available using Davis Reference computers

An online service that provides international economic and financial data in time series format. Series are acquired from national governments and banks, the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, OECD, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and other international agencies. Additional features include commodity prices, debt and equity information, exchange rates, interest rates, stock market indices, futures, options, and much more. Time coverage varies, but many series are available in daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual intervals for up to 10 years or longer. Datastream is available at the Internet machines in Electronic Reference.

Economic Census (Census Bureau)
Davis Reference Electronic Resource C3.277: (1987, 1992, 1997, 2002)
Davis Reference Row 11 (all censuses)
2002 and earlier census material available at Census Bureau

Economic Censuses are taken every five years in years ending in "2" and "7". Davis Library has all economic censuses. The 1992 Economic Census covers eight sectors of the economy: retail trade; wholesale trade; service industries; transportation, communications, and utilities; financial, insurance, and real estate industries; manufactures; mineral industries; and construction industries. Includes the number of establishments, number of employees, payroll, and measures of output such as sales, receipts, value of shipments, and value of construction work done. Geographical areas: U.S., state, county, place, metropolitan statistical area, ZIP code.

Economagic.com Economic Time Series Page

"A comprehensive site of free, easily available economic time series data useful for economic research, in particular economic forecasting". There are approximately 75,000 time series for which data and custom charts can be retrieved...majority of the data are USA data. The core data sets involve US macroeconomic data , but the bulk of the data are employment data by local area -- state, county, MSA, and many cities and towns (information taken from web page.)

Free Services:

• "Access to the Economagic database of over 100,000 economic time series all in the same text format
• Data are updated by robots the day the sources are updated
• On-demand custom charts of all series in the database in GIF format: one of the regular web picture formats in PDF format: the superb document format by Adobe
• chart options include:
  • start and end dates
  • percentage changes: period-to-period; year-to-year; and smoothed
• Excel spreadsheets for 8,500 of the most popular series in static form, a greatly underutilized facility great for tinkering in linked form, fantastic for the basis of self-made Internet self-updating spreadsheets of your own design" (copied from web page)

Fedstats: One Stop Shopping for Federal Statistics

This site is maintained by the Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy. It provides links to statistics and information produced by 70 federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, etc. This search engine is clunky and one may be better served by conducting a search in http://www.google.com/ig/usgov

FRED®

This site provides historical U.S. economic and financial data, including daily U.S. interest rates, monetary and business indicators, exchange rates, balance of payments and regional economic data for Arkansas, Illinois,Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.

The FRED® data files are grouped into 12 categories. All files, except those that are compressed, are in ASCII format. Compressed files are in .zip or self-extracting .exe formats. The compressed files contain all of the ASCII files within that category of data.

There are update files for most of the historical series on the FRED® data base. Select "Update file" from any category to display the index of update files. These files contain the last few observations for each series. They should be used if you want to display the last couple of observations or if you plan to maintain a mini-database and don't want to download the entire series each time there is an update.

The new ALFRED website allows you to efficiently retrieve vintage versions of economic data that were available on specific dates in history.

International Statistical Yearbook

International Statistical Yearbook (ISY) has been published by the German company DSI since 1990. It is updated annually and includes over 1,800,000 monthly, quarterly, and annual time series with (sporadic) coverage beginning in 1960. ISY includes a wide range of economic and socio-economic series: short-term economic indicators, industry, national accounts, financial data, communications, transport, demography, etc. Series are accessible through databases populated by a variety of organizations, including the following:

• Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat)
• Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)
• International Monetary Fund (IMF)
• United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
• German Federal Reserve Bank
• German Statistical Office
• German Institute for Economic Research (DIW)

LexisNexis Statistical

This site indexes statistics on population and demographics, business and financial activities, domestic and international trade, government programs, health, and politics. Full text or links to the full text are available for some of the indexed sources. Provides indexing and abstracts of statistical information published by the U.S. government (American Statistics Index), international intergovernmental organizations (Index to International Statistics), and some publications by private organizations and state government agencies (Statistical Reference Index).

Macroeconomic Time Series Data Source Locator

"This service provides you with a list of macroeconomic data sources available at the University of Chicago categorized by year, geographic location and subject. Types of sources include books, journals, yearbooks, CD-ROMs and Internet resources. For each source we determined the oldest date listed for a particular data category (balance of payments, bond market related, etc.). There are approximately 66 titles listed within this database".
Most of these titles should be available in Davis Library. If you are having problems locating materials please check at the Reference desk.

National Bureau of Economic Research

Founded in 1920, the National Bureau of Economic Research is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community.

OECD Health Data '2005 Available in Electronic Reference

Main fields covered:

• Health Status Inputs and Throughputs
• Life Expectancy Health Employment
• Potential Life Years Lost Medical Education & Training
• Premature Mortality Trade in Medical Goods & Services
• Morbidity
• Inputs and Throughputs National Expenditures on Health
• Health Employment Expenditure on In-Patient Care
• Medical Education and Training Expenditure on Ambulatory Care
• Trade in Medical Goods and Services Health Expenditure by Age Group
• Cost of Illness Health Care Financing
• Health Professions' Incomes
• Demographic References Macro-economic References
• Population Age Structure Private Consumption
• Household Status Monetary Conversion
• Labour Force
• Occupational Status -- Education & Training

Penn World Tables

The Penn World Table provides purchasing power parity and national income accounts converted to international prices for 168 countries for some or all of the years 1950-2000. The database is particularly valuable for its historical depth. Another value is the quality and comparability of the data across countries.

Three output formats are provided: html table, sas data input, comma separated values.

SSDC

The Social Science Data Center at the University of California, San Diego looks to provide easy access to raw numeric data, freely available over the Internet, as well as links to other data archives and catalogs of materials.

Statistical DataFinder

This is a unique tool that allows you to locate statistics and data sets. Resources include databases licensed by the University Library, sources freely available via the Internet, and print materials.

United Nations Statistics Division

Free access is provided to selected global datasets, such as the Millennium Indicators Database, which presents 48 social and economic indicators and related series by country and year since 1985, the Social Indicators data set and Trade Data by Commodities and Partners.

WDI Online (World Development Indicators)

Contains World Bank data Major source for data on the global economy, offering statistics on over 550 development indicators from over 200 countries. The data from WDI Online cover national economies, population, natural resources, financial matters, environmental variables, and much more, from 1960 to date.
Incorporates data from previous and current World Bank publications including World Tables, Social Indicators of Development, World Population Projections, and the World Bank Atlas. Data can be downloaded directly into Excel.

For additional assistance in this area, contact:
Rita W. Moss, Business and Economics Librarian
Email: moss@unc.edu

Can't Find What You Are Looking For? How Can We Help You?