Dr. Diego Mendez-Carbajo (St. Louis Fed) - "FRED Economics Champion"
On the first night of the JETSET Conference in St. Louis, our Keynote Speaker was Dr. Diego Mendez-Carbajo, speaking about "Using Research to Teach at Scale." Seemed like a good opportunity to remind teachers about some of the resources offered by the FRED team at the St. Louis FED, and feature a little bit about what they have been releasing and working on.
Jay LeBlanc
7/30/20252 min read
As I mentioned above, I'm attending the JET (Journal of Economics Teaching) Symposium on Economics Teaching (SET). Attendees, of course, can therefore be referred to as "jetsetters" (certainly the closest I will ever get to that "exalted" status in my life). I'm planning to drop several articles over the next week based on sessions at the conference, but wanted to start with our hosts here at the St. Louis Federal Reserve and the first night's keynote speaker, Diego Mendez-Carbajo. This isn't the place to rehash his talk on using research to teach at scale - but I did want to remind teachers about some of the resources Diego and his team have available to support and distribute FRED data.
Let's start with a little bit about Diego and his team:
Research Information Services and Staff at the St. Louis Fed (Diego is the 9th one down) - https://www.stlouisfed.org/research/information-services?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Diego's LinkedIn page (where he reposts FRED and Federal Reserve info all the time) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/diego-mendez-carbajo/
And maybe a little shout-out to the quality of what they do . . . - https://www.stlouisfed.org/research/about
But what can they do to help you as a K-12 teacher . . . ?:
FRED Main Page (Federal Reserve Economic Data - if you don't already know the acronym) - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/
Puts you right into the data, with features on new releases of information and trending search terms. Great if you already know what you are looking for, or are focusing on a specific term or set of data. If you need a little more about what kinds of economic data FRED works with, try this link - https://fredhelp.stlouisfed.org/fred/about/about-fred/what-is-fred/
FRED Blog (narrative descriptions of recent data releases or projects) - https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/
This is usually my starting point, looking for a narrative or story explaining the significance of the data (most of the time I'm looking for a connection to something else). Another nice thing here is the pre-made graphs - rather than creating your own from scratch.
Page One Economics - "Data Releases with FRED" (from the K-12 lesson series) - https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2025/jun/data-releases-with-fred
Hopefully you are already familiar with the monthly "Page One Economics" series from the Fed, with lessons for high school students (and quarterly for middle school) applying economics to the real world. Recently they have done 3-4 lessons on FRED data - the last one (linked above) was in June at the end of the school year and may have gotten overlooked.
AP Micro and AP Macro Entrance and Exit Tickets -
To wrap up, a quick application (or 2 sets of applications) you can test out with students. Each gives you FREE lessons in PDF format to use in your AP class - most of the examples are linked directly to the real-world data in FRED (so you can see if your students can apply (or use) the theory! Try them out as a warm-up before you dive deep into what FRED has to offer!
P.S. - If you need a "second opinion" on FRED, check out this article from the New York Times (paywalled) - "Everybody Loves FRED: How America Fell for a Data Tool" - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/business/economy/fred-economic-data-fandom.html