Yield Curve.

About the yield curve

What a yield curve is

A yield curve shows the yields on U.S. Treasury securities of different maturities on one date, from the 1-month bill to the 30-year bond. Each point is one maturity: the time until the security is repaid runs along the bottom, and its yield in percent runs up the side. The points are spaced by length of time, so the 10-year sits a third of the way to the 30-year and the line keeps the curve's true shape.

Where the figures come from

Every yield on this page is a par yield from the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates, which Treasury publishes for each trading day, in percent to two decimal places. The page covers every record date from January 3, 2005 to the latest. Treasury publishes the yields; it does not publish the spreads.

Maturities Treasury did not publish

Treasury did not publish every maturity on every date. In this history, Treasury's first published yields are on February 9, 2006 for the 30-year, October 16, 2018 for the 2-month, October 19, 2022 for the 4-month and February 18, 2025 for the 6-week. Treasury also left the 3-month blank on three dates in December 2008, and listed October 11, 2010 with no yields at all, so that date is not a record date on this page. A maturity Treasury did not publish is left off that date's curve, the line joins the maturities Treasury did publish, and a note under the chart names what is not shown. GENM never fills in or estimates a missing yield.

The spreads

The 10-year minus 2-year spread is the 10-year yield minus the 2-year yield on the same date, in percentage points. The 10-year minus 3-month spread is worked out the same way. Both are calculated from Treasury data, and only on dates when Treasury published both yields; on any other date the page shows "Not available for this date". A negative spread means the shorter maturity's yield was higher than the 10-year yield on that date.

Replaying the curve

The date slider under the first chart moves through every record date since January 3, 2005, one record date at a time. Play steps forward through the dates and stops at the latest; it pauses while the chart is off screen. The spread chart below it shows the 10-year minus 2-year spread on every record date, with a line at the date shown above.

How Then and Now works

Then and Now keeps the curve for the latest record date on screen as a solid gold line and adds a dashed curve for any record date since January 3, 2005. Each curve shows only the maturities Treasury published on its own date. The comparison opens on the first record date in this history. Three buttons jump to the Treasury record dates of three Federal Open Market Committee statements on the federal funds rate; each label states the date and what the statement announced, and the statements are linked under the buttons. One statement came out on a Sunday, when Treasury published no curve, so its button uses the next trading day. The page address holds the comparison date, so a copied link opens the same comparison. A date in a link that is not a record date opens on the nearest earlier record date, with a note.

If the data cannot load

If the GENM data service cannot be reached, the page shows the last Treasury data saved in your browser, with the date it was saved. With reduced motion turned on in your device settings, the curves change without animation.

What this page is not

This page shows Treasury's published yields and arithmetic on them, and describes what the curve looked like on each date. It does not say what the curve means for anyone's money or what yields will do next. Nothing on it is financial or investment advice.