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Journal Article
Assessing Labor Market Conditions Using High-Frequency Data
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020, the U.S. economy experienced a sharp, unexpected recession with large employment losses. The information on employment available from traditional data sources arrives with a lag and does not promptly reflect sudden changes in labor market conditions. In this article, we discuss how new high-frequency data from Homebase and Ultimate Kronos Group can offer critical information on the state of labor markets in real time. Using these datasets, we construct coincident employment indices to assess employment at a high frequency. Employment during the ...
Journal Article
Business Dynamism in the Eighth District
Business dynamism rates in the Federal Reserve’s Eighth District are about 1 percentage point lower than in the rest of the country.
Retirements Surge for Older Workers during COVID-19
Though retirement decisions vary by different age groups, the COVID-19 pandemic increased retirement rates for those age 66 and older.
Do Congested Ports Cause Higher Shipping Costs?
An analysis of changes in the cost to ship to major U.S. ports suggests that rising costs varied more by the country of origin than by the port of entry.
Journal Article
Income Volatility as a Barrier to Food Stamp Takeup
Families with greater volatility in their incomes had more switches in food stamp eligibility and lower rates of food stamp usage when they were eligible.
SNAP Benefits and the Volatility of Food Spending
Food spending is more volatile for families enrolled in SNAP than for families with similar incomes but not enrolled in the federal nutrition program.
Working Paper
Shipping Prices and Import Price Inflation
During the pandemic there have been unprecedented increases in the cost of shipping goods accompanied by delays and backlogs at the ports. At the same time, import price inflation has reached levels unseen since the early 1980s. This has led many to speculate that the two trends are linked. In this article, we use new data on the price of shipping goods between countries to analyze the extent to which increases in the price of shipping can account for the increase in U.S. import price inflation. We find that the pass-through of shipping costs is small. Nevertheless, because the rise in ...
Journal Article
Inflation and Shipping Costs
Imports that are more reliant on ocean freight have seen higher import price inflation since the start of the pandemic.
Working Paper
The Effect of COVID Immigration Restrictions on Post-Pandemic Labor Market Tightness
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were unprecedented shortfalls in immigration. Concurrently, as the economy recovered, the labor market became tight, with the number of vacancies per unemployed worker reaching two, more than twice its pre-pandemic average. In this article, we investigate whether these two trends are connected. We find no evidence to support the hypothesis that the immigration shortfalls caused the tight labor market, for two main reasons. First, while the immigration deficit peaked at about two million workers, this number had largely recovered by February 2022, just as ...
Journal Article
What Can Be Done to Promote Black Entrepreneurship?
Black men and women are less likely to become entrepreneurs than their white peers. What could help address this disparity?