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Discussion Paper
Upstate New York Job Growth: The Bad News Is that the Good News Was Wrong
In 2015, upstate New York looked to be having its strongest job growth in years. Employment was estimated to be growing at around one percent—below the national pace, but twice the region's trend growth rate since the end of the Great Recession. Buffalo, in particular, looked to be gaining significant numbers of construction and manufacturing jobs for the first time in decades, pushing it to its highest job growth since the late 1990s. Unfortunately, the good news was wrong. Annual benchmark revisions to New York State's employment data released in early March cut upstate's growth rate in ...
Discussion Paper
Some Workers Have Been Hit Much Harder than Others by the Pandemic
As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the United States, in just two months—between February and April 2020—the nation saw well over 20 million workers lose their jobs, an unprecedented 15 percent decline. Since then, substantial progress has been made, but employment still remains 5 percent below its pre-pandemic level. However, not all workers have been affected equally. This post is the first in a three-part series exploring disparities in labor market outcomes during the pandemic—and represents an extension of ongoing research into heterogeneities and inequalities in people’s ...
Journal Article
Regional business cycles in New York State
We track the business cycles for New York State and for major upstate metropolitan areas over the last quarter century and compare them with the national cycles. To date the regional cycles, we use a new methodology that combines several data series into a single composite measure - or index - of economic activity. Our findings show that New York State's recessions tend to last longer than the nation's, although the region's metropolitan areas have very different industrial compositions and thus different business cycles.
Discussion Paper
Where Are Manufacturing Jobs Coming Back?
As we outlined in our previous post, the United States lost close to sixmillion manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010 but since then has gained back almost one million. In this post, we take a closer look at the geographic dimension of this modest rebound in manufacturing jobs. While job losses during the 2000s were fairly widespread across the country, manufacturing employment gains since then have been concentrated in particular parts of the country. Indeed, these gains were especially large in ?auto alley??a narrow motor vehicle production corridor stretching from Michigan south to ...
Discussion Paper
Local Hangovers: How the Housing Boom and Bust Affected Jobs in Metro Areas
What explains why some places suffered particularly severe job losses during the Great Recession? In this post, we extend our recent Current Issues article analyzing regional dimensions of the latest housing cycle and show that metropolitan areas that experienced the biggest housing booms and busts from 2000 to 2008 lost the most jobs during the recession. Not surprisingly, construction activity helps explain the tight link between housing and local job market performance. Given this pattern, we believe that each metro area’s boom-bust experience is likely to continue to influence its ...
Journal Article
The causes and consequences of Puerto Rico's declining population
Puerto Rico?s population has been falling for nearly a decade, and the pace of decline has accelerated in recent years. Although a slowdown in the island?s birthrate has contributed to this decline, a surge in the out-migration of its citizens has been a more important factor. The exodus?which includes a large share of younger people?has hastened population aging, but it has not necessarily led to a ?brain drain.? To counter its population loss, Puerto Rico must not only adopt measures to shore up its economy and expand job opportunities, but also enact fiscal reforms and improve the island?s ...
Discussion Paper
The Cost of College Continues to Climb
College is much more expensive than it used to be. Tuition for a bachelor’s degree has more than tripled from an (inflation-adjusted) average of about $5,000 per year in the 1970s to around $18,000 today. For many parents and prospective students, this high and rising tuition has raised concerns about whether getting a college degree is still worth it—a question we addressed in a 2014 study. In this post, we update that study, estimating the cost of college in terms of both out-of-pocket expenses, like tuition, and opportunity costs, the wages one gives up to attend school. We find that ...
Discussion Paper
Finally, Some Signs of Improvement in the Regional Economy
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s June business surveys show some signs of improvement in the regional economy. Following two months of unprecedented decline due to the coronavirus pandemic, indicators of business activity point to a slower pace of contraction in the service sector and signs of a rebound in the manufacturing sector. Even more encouraging, as the regional economy has begun to reopen, many businesses have started to recall workers who were laid off or put on furlough since the start of the pandemic. Some have even hired new workers. Moreover, businesses expect to recall ...
Discussion Paper
Staying In College Longer Than Four Years Costs More Than You Might Think
In yesterday’s blog post and in our recent article in the New York Fed’s Current Issues series, we showed that the economic benefits of a bachelor’s degree still outweigh the costs, on average, even in today’s difficult labor market. Like others who assess the value of a bachelor’s degree, we base our estimates on the assumption that a student takes four years to finish the degree. But it is not uncommon for people to take longer than that. In fact, recent data indicate that among those who complete a bachelor’s degree within six years, only about two-thirds finish in four years ...
Journal Article
Do the benefits of college still outweigh the costs?
In recent years, students have been paying more to attend college and earning less upon graduation?trends that have led many observers to question whether a college education remains a good investment. However, an analysis of the economic returns to college since the 1970s demonstrates that the benefits of both a bachelor?s degree and an associate?s degree still tend to outweigh the costs, with both degrees earning a return of about 15 percent over the past decade. The return has remained high in spite of rising tuition and falling earnings because the wages of those without a college degree ...