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US national activity signals (CFNAI business-cycle gauges, recession flags)

Monthly signals derived from the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (redistributed by FRED, 1967-03 ->): 30-month change volatility, 3-month momentum, 3-sigma anomaly flags vs a trailing 12-month baseline, naive-drift 1-month forecasts, the Chicago Fed's 3-month moving-average business-cycle gauge, recession and expansion flags at the Chicago Fed's +/-0.70 thresholds, and a 5-year activity-regime z-score. All rows are normalized to country_code USA so they join cleanly with US macro data. Raw series: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED); underlying data: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Source: National Activity Signals (derived)714 rowsUpdated: 9/22/2026
business-cyclerecessioncfnaiactivity-indexmacroeconomicsvolatilitymomentumanomaly-detectionforecastingsignalsfred

Quality

99.7

Attribution

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED; underlying data: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; derived signals by Frontier Data Hub)

Schema

ColumnTypeDescription
datestringObservation date (FRED API field date; YYYY-MM-DD).
countrystring
country_codestring
series_idstringFRED series ID (CFNAI — Chicago Fed National Activity Index); the ID resolves to the series page at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CFNAI.
series_labelstringOfficial FRED series title as published for the series (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago National Activity Index).
valuefloatChicago Fed National Activity Index value, monthly, not seasonally adjusted; a zero value indicates the national economy is expanding at its historical trend rate, negative values below-trend growth and positive values above-trend growth.
volatility_30dfloat
momentum_3mfloat
anomaly_flaginteger
forecast_1mfloat
cfnai_ma3float
recession_flaginteger
expansion_flaginteger
cfnai_z_5yfloat

Sample rows

datecountrycountry_codeseries_idseries_labelvaluevolatility_30dmomentum_3manomaly_flagforecast_1mcfnai_ma3recession_flagexpansion_flagcfnai_z_5y
1967-03-01United StatesUSACFNAIChicago Fed National Activity Index-0.35000
1967-04-01United StatesUSACFNAIChicago Fed National Activity Index0000
1967-05-01United StatesUSACFNAIChicago Fed National Activity Index-0.560-0.3033333333333333400
1967-06-01United StatesUSACFNAIChicago Fed National Activity Index0.030.380-0.1766666666666666700
1967-07-01United StatesUSACFNAIChicago Fed National Activity Index-0.32-0.320-0.283333333333333400

Download sample data

Download the full sample snapshot for this dataset (sample rows, not the complete dataset).

Use with an LLM

Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).

cURL

curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/cfnai_signals/us_national_activity_signals" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'

Python

import requests

ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/cfnai_signals/us_national_activity_signals").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")

# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
    print(row)

API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/cfnai_signals/us_national_activity_signals

Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.