Scatter: U.S. Policy Response (Unemployment vs Federal Funds Rate)

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Scenario

Plot each monthly observation as a point with unemployment on the x-axis and the effective federal funds rate on the y-axis over the last five years. This reveals how tightly or loosely the Fed’s policy stance has tracked labor market conditions across different economic regimes.

Data Source And Refresh

• Sources: BLS series LNS14000000 (unemployment rate) and FRED series FEDFUNDS (effective federal funds rate).
• Source URLs: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS
• Refresh cadence: Monthly via GitHub Actions cache update workflow.
• Data continuity: This page will continue updating while BLS and FRED publish compatible data.

When To Use

Use a scatter chart when the question is about the relationship or clustering between two numeric variables rather than their individual trends over time.

Manifest

<para-chart manifest="data/manifests/us-policy-scatter.json"></para-chart>

Full manifest (JSON):

• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mgifford/ParaCharts/main/docs/data/manifests/us-policy-scatter.json

Interpretation Prompts

1. Do the points cluster into distinct zones that suggest different policy regimes?
2. Is there a visible zone where high unemployment coincides with near-zero rates?
3. Where do the most recent observations fall relative to historical clusters?