The rates desk · municipal bonds, as history
Municipal bond yields,
1953 to 2016.
The Bond Buyer 20-Bond general obligation index, as the Federal Reserve republished it on H.15: weekly from 1 January 1953 to 6 October 2016, when the Board stopped carrying it. The Bond Buyer still publishes the index, to subscribers only (checked 29 September 2026), so no free current figure exists — which is why this page is history, and says so. Every one of the 3,325 weeks is drawn below and summed up year by year.
The index, week by week
3,325 Thursdays, 1953 to 2016.
The same series, as a table
Year by year.
| Year | First | Last | High | Low | Weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1953 | 2.40 | 2.58 | 3.09 | 2.40 | 52 |
| 1954 | 2.54 | 2.36 | 2.54 | 2.26 | 52 |
| 1955 | 2.38 | 2.58 | 2.63 | 2.37 | 52 |
| 1956 | 2.56 | 3.21 | 3.24 | 2.42 | 52 |
| 1957 | 3.23 | 2.97 | 3.57 | 2.96 | 52 |
| 1958 | 2.97 | 3.38 | 3.59 | 2.85 | 52 |
| 1959 | 3.40 | 3.77 | 3.81 | 3.26 | 53 |
| 1960 | 3.78 | 3.38 | 3.78 | 3.27 | 52 |
| 1961 | 3.39 | 3.42 | 3.55 | 3.26 | 52 |
| 1962 | 3.37 | 3.05 | 3.37 | 2.98 | 52 |
| 1963 | 3.05 | 3.26 | 3.31 | 3.01 | 52 |
| 1964 | 3.26 | 3.12 | 3.32 | 3.12 | 53 |
| 1965 | 3.07 | 3.54 | 3.56 | 3.04 | 52 |
| 1966 | 3.53 | 3.77 | 4.24 | 3.51 | 52 |
| 1967 | 3.76 | 4.44 | 4.45 | 3.40 | 52 |
| 1968 | 4.38 | 4.85 | 4.85 | 4.07 | 52 |
| 1969 | 4.85 | 6.79 | 6.90 | 4.82 | 52 |
| 1970 | 6.61 | 5.58 | 7.12 | 5.33 | 52 |
| 1971 | 5.74 | 5.02 | 6.23 | 4.97 | 52 |
| 1972 | 5.03 | 5.11 | 5.54 | 4.96 | 52 |
| 1973 | 5.08 | 5.16 | 5.59 | 4.99 | 52 |
| 1974 | 5.18 | 7.08 | 7.15 | 5.16 | 52 |
| 1975 | 7.08 | 7.30 | 7.67 | 6.27 | 52 |
| 1976 | 7.29 | 5.83 | 7.29 | 5.83 | 53 |
| 1977 | 5.78 | 5.66 | 5.93 | 5.45 | 52 |
| 1978 | 5.64 | 6.61 | 6.67 | 5.58 | 52 |
| 1979 | 6.58 | 7.23 | 7.38 | 6.08 | 52 |
| 1980 | 7.32 | 9.99 | 10.56 | 7.11 | 52 |
| 1981 | 9.66 | 13.30 | 13.30 | 9.49 | 53 |
| 1982 | 13.36 | 9.56 | 13.44 | 9.25 | 52 |
| 1983 | 9.48 | 9.76 | 10.04 | 8.78 | 52 |
| 1984 | 9.66 | 9.91 | 11.07 | 9.51 | 52 |
| 1985 | 9.87 | 8.36 | 9.87 | 8.36 | 52 |
| 1986 | 8.33 | 6.83 | 8.33 | 6.74 | 52 |
| 1987 | 6.85 | 7.86 | 9.17 | 6.54 | 53 |
| 1988 | 7.83 | 7.50 | 7.97 | 7.33 | 52 |
| 1989 | 7.44 | 6.97 | 7.72 | 6.86 | 52 |
| 1990 | 7.03 | 7.14 | 7.56 | 7.03 | 52 |
| 1991 | 7.09 | 6.58 | 7.19 | 6.58 | 52 |
| 1992 | 6.52 | 6.17 | 6.79 | 5.89 | 53 |
| 1993 | 6.17 | 5.28 | 6.19 | 5.20 | 52 |
| 1994 | 5.34 | 6.71 | 7.06 | 5.25 | 52 |
| 1995 | 6.66 | 5.44 | 6.66 | 5.35 | 52 |
| 1996 | 5.37 | 5.66 | 6.12 | 5.33 | 52 |
| 1997 | 5.70 | 5.14 | 5.88 | 5.14 | 52 |
| 1998 | 5.15 | 5.00 | 5.32 | 4.82 | 53 |
| 1999 | 5.05 | 6.00 | 6.00 | 4.96 | 52 |
| 2000 | 6.04 | 5.14 | 6.11 | 5.14 | 52 |
| 2001 | 5.09 | 5.26 | 5.34 | 4.91 | 51 |
| 2002 | 5.26 | 4.79 | 5.34 | 4.66 | 52 |
| 2003 | 4.84 | 4.58 | 5.18 | 4.21 | 52 |
| 2004 | 4.60 | 4.49 | 5.14 | 4.35 | 53 |
| 2005 | 4.47 | 4.38 | 4.63 | 4.18 | 52 |
| 2006 | 4.35 | 4.17 | 4.71 | 4.03 | 52 |
| 2007 | 4.15 | 4.44 | 4.81 | 4.08 | 52 |
| 2008 | 4.32 | 5.33 | 6.01 | 4.15 | 52 |
| 2009 | 5.24 | 4.25 | 5.24 | 3.94 | 53 |
| 2010 | 4.31 | 4.95 | 5.15 | 3.82 | 52 |
| 2011 | 5.08 | 3.88 | 5.41 | 3.83 | 52 |
| 2012 | 3.83 | 3.58 | 4.08 | 3.27 | 52 |
| 2013 | 3.68 | 4.73 | 5.03 | 3.53 | 52 |
| 2014 | 4.75 | 3.65 | 4.75 | 3.65 | 52 |
| 2015 | 3.56 | 3.57 | 3.87 | 3.29 | 53 |
| 2016 | 3.45 | 3.20 | 3.45 | 2.80 | 40 |
About the series
Why it stops, and what it was.
Why it stops
FRED’s note on the series reads: “The Federal Reserve Board has discontinued this series as of October 11, 2016.” The Board had carried the index in its H.15 Selected Interest Rates release; its last observation there is 6 October 2016. The index itself did not end: The Bond Buyer still publishes it, weekly, to its subscribers (checked 29 September 2026). What ended is the free copy, and with it any free, current figure for the municipal market.
What is not available
A current municipal yield, for free. The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s EMMA site publishes individual trades bond by bond, which is not an index of the market; the commercial indices behind today’s muni yield curves are sold to subscribers. This desk will not print a figure with no source under it, so it prints the series up to the day its free source stopped, and says so on every figure.
What the series was
H.15 described it as the “Bond Buyer Index, general obligation, 20 years to maturity, mixed quality, Thursday quotations”: an average of the yields on twenty general-obligation bonds of state and local governments, each with twenty years to run, quoted every Thursday. Interest on most of those bonds is exempt from federal income tax, which is why the line runs below the 10-year Treasury for most of its history (compare them on the history page).
Where these figures come from
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US), Bond Buyer Go 20-Bond Municipal Bond Index (DISCONTINUED) [WSLB20], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. All 3,325 weekly observations are shown; the first is 1 January 1953 and the last 6 October 2016. They were checked row for row against FRED on 29 September 2026 and are stored with this page, because a final series has nothing left to read. The highest and lowest weeks are counted from the weekly rows, not from a monthly summary.