One good source of economic data is the FRED website httpsfr

One good source of economic data is the FRED website (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/)Links to an external site. of the St. Louis Fed. Check it out. What were the data for each of the following in August 2012 and August 2013:

a. Unemployment rate? (To get this properly, type “UNRATE” in the search box in the FRED website, and a graph for the unemployment rate will pop up. Click on the graph, and a “download data in graph” link will appear above the graph. That link leads you to the numeric data in an Excel file. Record the data for Aug’12 and Aug’13.)

b. CPI inflation rate? (To do this, search “CPIAUCSL” in FRED. This will lead you to the data on CPI. What you need to do is get the numbers for CPI in Aug’11, Aug’12, and Aug’13 – and use these to compute the inflation rate in Aug’12 and Aug’13 by applying the formula for inflation rate that you learned in this module.)

c. Compute and compare the misery indexes for Aug 2012 and Aug 2013.

Solution

a) inflation data

UNRATE

b.

226.106

229.918

233.323

inflation rate for Aug 12 = 229.918/226.106= 1.017

inflation rate for Aug 13 = 233.323/229.918 = 1.015

c) misery index = unemployement rate + inflation rate

Aug 12 = 8.1+1.017 = 9.117

Aug 13= 7.3+1.015 = 8.315