FRED DGS2 — Daily CSV Download (US 2-Year Treasury Yield)
The US 2-year Treasury yield is the market’s best real-time proxy for expected Federal Reserve policy over the next 24 months. Unlike the 10-year yield, which embeds growth and inflation expectations over a decade, the 2-year moves almost lock-step with changes in Fed Funds rate expectations. This dataset provides daily observations from the FRED series DGS2 since 1976.
Dataset: US 2-Year Treasury Yield (1976–2026) · Updated —
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Source: FRED series DGS2 · Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Macro Takeaway
The 2-year yield is the most operationally important rate for reading monetary policy expectations. When it diverges significantly from the current Fed Funds rate, the bond market is pricing in policy change: a 2-year yield well below the Fed Funds rate signals expected cuts, while a 2-year above signals expected hikes. This spread (2Y minus Fed Funds) is effectively the market’s forecast of the Fed’s next 8 meetings.
The 2-year also forms the short end of the 10Y-2Y yield curve spread — the most widely tracked recession indicator. When the 2-year rises above the 10-year, the curve inverts, signaling that the market expects current monetary tightening to eventually force rate cuts.
Dataset Overview
| Indicator | US 2-Year Treasury Yield (1976–2026) |
|---|---|
| Geography | United States |
| Frequency | Daily (business days) |
| Period | 1976–2026 |
| Variables | date, yield_2y |
| Format | CSV, Excel (XLSX) |
| Sources | Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED |
| Last updated | — |
Dataset Variables
The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
date | Date (YYYY-MM-DD) | Observation date |
yield_2y | Float | yield_2y value |
Column names match the CSV headers exactly.
Download the Complete Dataset
The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.
FRED Direct CSV Access
The underlying data is available from FRED under series code DGS2:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=DGS2
Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset
https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-2y-treasury-yield.csv
This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.
Using the Dataset in Python
import pandas as pd url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-2y-treasury-yield.csv" df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"]) print(df.head()) print(df["dgs2"].describe())
Using the Dataset in R
library(readr) url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-2y-treasury-yield.csv" df <- read_csv(url) head(df) summary(df$dgs2)
Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.
Methodology
The 2-year constant maturity rate (DGS2) is interpolated by the US Treasury from the daily yield curve of outstanding securities, using the same methodology as the 10-year rate. It represents the theoretical yield on a security with exactly 2 years remaining to maturity.
The series begins in June 1976, when the Treasury first began publishing 2-year constant maturity data. Prior to this date, no comparable series exists in FRED.
This dataset is updated weekly (Saturday 08:00 UTC) via automated pull from the FRED API.
Historical Regimes
1976–1981 — Volcker shock. The 2-year yield spiked above 16% as the Fed raised rates aggressively to combat inflation. The extreme volatility of short-term rates during this period — 2-year yields moved hundreds of basis points in weeks — reflects the uncertainty about the Fed’s commitment to its tightening program.
1981–2000 — Secular decline. The 2-year fell from 16% to approximately 6%, tracking the gradual decline in inflation and in the neutral Fed Funds rate. Each economic cycle produced a lower peak in 2-year yields.
2001–2019 — Zero-bound era. The 2-year dropped below 1% after both the 2001 and 2008 recessions, spending most of the 2010s between 0.2% and 2.5%. This reflected the Fed’s extended zero-rate policy and forward guidance.
2022–present — Fastest tightening in modern history. The 2-year yield surged from 0.7% to above 5% in barely 18 months — the fastest move since Volcker — as the Fed raised the Fed Funds rate from 0% to 5.25-5.50%. The subsequent path tracks market expectations for the timing and depth of rate cuts.
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Macroeconomic Dataset Hub
This dataset is part of the Eco3min macro-financial data repository.
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Sources
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — H.15 Selected Interest Rates
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED series DGS2