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Searching for “Inflation Canaries” in Household Surveys
Current surveys of household inflation expectations make it challenging to identify “inflation canaries”—individuals who consistently send out early and accurate warning signals for inflation. We propose some simple changes in survey design (longer, staggered survey panels) and emphasis (focusing on changes in expectations rather than levels and highlighting particularly accurate subpopulations) that have the potential to alleviate these concerns. To demonstrate, we provide several examples using the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations.
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Blending Traditional and Alternative Labor Market Data with CHURN
In this article, we present a new real-time model called CHURN—short for Chicago Fed Unemployment Rate Nowcast. CHURN provides a weekly tracking estimate for the civilian unemployment rate (UR) produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). To do so, CHURN blends monthly statistics on job flows (i.e., job-finding and job-separation rates) from the BLS and other traditional labor market indicators with alternative high-frequency indicators from private sector sources.
Introducing the Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators
On September 23, 2025, we debuted the Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators. Updated twice per month, this new data release provides an early read on U.S. labor market conditions: The Chicago Fed Real-Time Unemployment Rate Forecast is a forecast of the U.S. civilian unemployment rate while the Chicago Fed Layoffs and Other Separations Rate and the Chicago Fed Hiring Rate for Unemployed Workers provide further context for the job flows that influence the unemployment rate. In this article, we describe these new indicators and provide additional analysis for their first release for September ...