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Unemployment Rate

What it is

Unemployment Rate — registry key unrate.

Civilian Unemployment Rate (FRED UNRATE); first labor-market signal on the platform. Monthly BLS release. Ingested + persisted, not yet scored. No band classifier in this PR.

Data-pyramid tier

T0 — Raw input. This metric sits at the raw input layer of the platform’s six-tier data pyramid (T0 raw inputs → T5 actionable read). The tier reflects how far the value is from a raw measurement — not how strongly it is validated. Abstraction and validation are separate axes: a higher tier is not a claim of stronger evidence.

Horizon & validation

No validated skill horizon is on file for this metric — read it as context / a data carrier, not a validated edge. Stamps are added only when a gated research verdict lands.

Source

Source module: fred_macro
Data source: back_fillable

Fetched directly from app/sources/fred_macro.py; see source code for the upstream API call and any provider-specific handling.

How it’s computed

Raw civilian Unemployment Rate from FRED series UNRATE, in percent — the first labor-market signal on the platform. Released monthly by the BLS (Employment Situation, first Friday) for the prior month. A rising trend (especially vs the Sahm-rule threshold) is a lagging recession confirmation; carried as state context for the drawdown lane. Monthly cadence; the FRED latest-observation walk re-reads the same value between releases. data_only carrier — no band classifier. See app/sources/fred_macro.py (UNRATE).

Where it surfaces

• API field: fred_macro.unrate on GET /api/v1/signals/latest
• Surface: daily_signals row (daily-cadence persistence)
• Surface: /signals/sparklines (UI sparklines)

Health-score / alignment role

Data carrier — no implication, no health-score contribution.

Persisted for downstream consumers (sparklines, base-rate matcher, calibration substrate) but does not classify into BULLISH / NEUTRAL / BEARISH and does not contribute to the 0-100 health score.

Release cadence

• Publishes: monthly
• Approximate time (ET): 08:30
• Lag days: 35

BLS Employment Situation, first Friday of the month ~08:30 ET, covering the prior month; lag_days reflects worst-case reference-month-to-release gap.

See also

• /kb/api/get-signals-latest — API endpoint that serves this field.