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Discussion Paper
Urban Marylanders Are Migrating to More Affordable and Smaller Metro Areas
With its unemployment rate reaching 1.9 percent in December 2023, Maryland has the tightest labor market in the country, which poses an ongoing hiring challenge for the state's employers. A key contributor to the tightness is the state's slow post-pandemic labor force recovery, especially in the state's inner-ring suburbs of the District of Columbia. While some of the state's former workers and job seekers have dropped out of the labor force but have remained residents, others have left the state altogether, according to recent statistics that placed Maryland in the top 5 states by net ...
Working Paper
The Labor Market Effects of Place-Based Policies: Evidence from England’s Neighbourhood Renewal Fund
Neighborhood renewal programs are a type of place-based policy that aim to revive underperforming localities. The literature on place-based policies has found mixed results regarding their effects on local labor market outcomes, but there are relatively few studies of policies that aim to improve local labor supply. In this paper, we examine the labor market effects of the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, which targeted eighty-eight of the most deprived areas in England during the early 2000s as part of the Labour Government's National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. The fund disbursed almost ...
Working Paper
Do Research Universities Recession Proof Their Regions? Evidence from State Flagship College Towns
Using synthetic differences-in-differences models, we study whether U.S. counties containing state flagship universities experienced resiliency via lower unemployment rates during the past three U.S. recessions. We find an insignificant effect for the 2001 recession and a large resiliency effect for the 2008-2009 recession. However, counties with flagship universities faced higher unemployment rates during the 2020 recession, and were therefore less resilient to the Covid-19 recession than other counties. These results support the hypothesis that stable consumption demand for non-tradables ...
Discussion Paper
The Impact of the Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse on Fifth District Firms
The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 26 killed six people, severed a major interstate highway, and temporarily closed the Port of Baltimore. This Macro Minute blog post last month discussed potential regional economic effects as well as several reasons to be hopeful for the port's long-term recovery upon reopening.Between March 28 and April 17 in our April manufacturing and service sector surveys, to assess its immediate economic impact, we asked Fifth District firms to report if and how the bridge collapse will impact their businesses. Overall, 30 ...
Discussion Paper
Digital Access Deficiencies in Rural Health Care Deserts: Identifying a Role for Telehealth
Telehealth, defined as digital access to health care services, has become increasingly used by American patients since the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that many rural communities in the United States face lower access to health care relative to urban communities, telehealth offers a potential opportunity to support health care access in these underserved areas. In particular, telehealth can partly help offset fewer hospitals and health care professionals per capita in rural areas compared to their metropolitan counterparts. However, the digital divide in access to broadband and digital devices ...
Journal Article
Third District State Budgets in the Coronavirus Recession
Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are in for a struggle as they try to balance their budgets during this unprecedented economic cycle.
Discussion Paper
Fifth District State Business Cycles
To model national and state business cycles, this post first explores fluctuations of payroll employment around its long-run trend, comparing the correlation of the state-level employment fluctuations to the national series. Second, it explores how a popular rule of thumb recession indicator, the Sahm Recession Rule, performs when applied to state-level data compared to national data during the past four economic downturns. Third, this analysis not only provides us with insight into states' historical relationships with the U.S. business cycle, but it also reveals how they might fare in ...
Journal Article
Regional Spotlight: Evaluating Metro Unemployment Rates Throughout the Business Cycle
Over 80 percent of the world?s recreational vehicle (RV) production occurs in or near Elkhart, IN, so it?s no wonder that, for decades, Elkhart has been known as the RV capital of the world. Thanks in part to RVs, Elkhart?s unemployment rate was comfortably below the national rate in 2007?but then RV sales plummeted two years in a row, a signal that American consumers could no longer afford high-ticket luxury goods.2 By the depths of the Great Recession in mid-2009, nearly one-fifth of Elkhart?s labor force was unemployed. However, Elkhart?s labor market quickly recovered, with unemployment ...
Discussion Paper
Firm Price-Setting Behavior Amid Elevated Price Growth: Evidence From Our Surveys
very month, the Richmond Fed surveys firms across the Fifth District to understand how economic and business conditions are changing. As a part of this survey, we ask firms to report the 12-month percentage change in the prices they receive from customers for their goods or services. Additionally, we ask firms to provide their expectations for how prices will change over the next 12 months.As inflation has picked up in the U.S. economy, we have paid particular attention to the price measures from our surveys. Not surprisingly, firms in our district have experienced higher price growth since ...
Discussion Paper
The Rural Reach of ARPA’s Development Grants in the Fifth District
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), enacted in March 2021, contained economic development funding to invest in locally driven projects aimed at securing long-term regional growth. Proposals for these ARPA grants were solicited among American communities through six separate programs to address regional economic goals such as harnessing new industries, supporting workforce development, and enabling infrastructure. Through September 2022, $3 billion was ultimately awarded across 780 projects through a competitive process by the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA).This article ...