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Journal Article
Consumer Discretionary Sector Has Boosted Recent Regional Services Activity as Business and Professional Activity Slows
The Kansas City Fed’s monthly services survey tracks business activity for a wide variety of services firms in the Tenth District. We segment the results into consumer services (both discretionary and nondiscretionary) and business and professional services and find that the consumer sector has been stronger than the business and professional sector recently, driven by discretionary services. Accordingly, consumer services firms report greater pricing power, expected wage growth, and capital expenditures.
Journal Article
The District economic outlook : responding to labor shortages and overseas problems
The Tenth District economy slowed down in 1998, with employment growing marginally below the national average. Despite very tight labor markets, employment growth remained healthy in many sectors. Construction; trade; transportation, communications, and public utilities; and finance, insurance, and real estate---all posted healthy gains. The manufacturing and service sectors, however, turned in weak growth, a result of the Asian financial turmoil and a shortage of skilled workers throughout the district. District agriculture had a difficult year, as commodity prices plunged in the face of ...
Journal Article
What are the benefits of hosting a major league sports franchise?
Over the last few decades the number of U.S. metropolitan areas large enough to host a franchise from one of the four major professional sports leagues has soared. Even as major league baseball, football, basketball and hockey have expanded to include more franchises, demand by metro areas continues to exceed supply. Metro areas have thus been forced to compete with each other to retain and attract franchises. ; The resulting large public spending on new sports facilities has been quite controversial. Usually these costly projects are justified by claims that hosting a sports franchise spurs ...
Journal Article
Travel and tourism : an overlooked industry in the U.S. and Tenth District
With the onset of recession in early 2001, the U.S. travel and tourism industry fell into its worst slump since World War II. The September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent tightening of airport restrictions dealt the industry an unprecedented blow. Many travel destinations continued to suffer in 2002 and early 2003 from a declining stock market, sluggish economic recovery, and war in Iraq. Prior to these recent difficulties, however, travel and tourism?s role in the national economy had been rising steadily for decades.> As in the nation, the travel and tourism industry has become ...
Journal Article
Booms and busts in household wealth: implications for Tenth District states
The U.S. stock market and housing market--the two largest sources of U.S. household wealth--have had sizable booms and busts in recent years. This volatility has influenced national consumption trends and had important consequences for states. Some states have become relatively wealthier, affecting both the short- and long-term consumption spending potential of their residents. ; Understanding how wealth changes affect state economies could be especially important in 2011 and 2012 given the recent resumption of home price declines in much of the country. Research has shown that consumption ...
Journal Article
The transformation of manufacturing across Federal Reserve Districts: success for the Great Plains?
Despite experiencing solid gains in the last two years, U.S. manufacturing employment is down by about one-third since 1990. The decline has been felt more dramatically in some eastern Federal Reserve Districts. ; In the three Districts of the Great Plains?Dallas, Kansas City and Minneapolis?factory employment has consistently held up better than in other Districts. ; Wilkerson and Williams find that since 2000, nearly half of the better factory jobs performance in the Great Plains has been due to a more favorable mix of manufacturing industries than in other regions of the country.
Journal Article
What do expected changes in U.S. job structure mean for states and workers in the Tenth District?
Public interest in the future structure of the U.S. labor market has been understandably high in recent years, for several reasons. Some types of manufacturing and service jobs are going offshore. The recovery in employment from the 2001 recession has been sluggish. And the quality of job creation has been called into question. Against this backdrop, policymakers, businesses, workers, and students in the Tenth Federal Reserve District are asking difficult questions about the future of jobs in their area. Will local industries increase or decrease employment in the years ahead? What types of ...
Journal Article
Senator Robert Owen of Oklahoma and the Federal Reserve's formative years
U.S. Senator Robert Owen of Oklahoma played a key role in the formation of the Federal Reserve in the early twentieth century. He championed the creation of a quasi-public central bank with a decentralized structure. Author Chad Wilkerson explores how Senator Owen contributed to the Fed's early development and sought a Fed structure that would avoid placing too much control either in a centralized agency in Washington, D.C., or in a small number of Wall Street bankers. Owen generally praised the Fed's early performance but became a critic in the early 1920s, and again in the 1930s, when its ...
Journal Article
Will tightness in Tenth District labor markets result in economic slowdown?
Labor markets in the Tenth District are tighter now than at any time in recent memory. The steady fall of unemployment rates in recent years has led many analysts to wonder if future economic growth in the region could be restricted by labor shortages. The district's labor market is actually even tighter than suggested by its unemployment rate of less than 4 percent in 1998 due to the presence of two other significant, but often overlooked, factors: high labor force participation rates and slowing domestic migration flows.> The labor force participation rate, meaning roughly the percentage of ...
Journal Article
The Tenth District's defining industries: how are they changing?
The economy of the Tenth Federal Reserve District has become increasingly more services-based in recent years. While this transformation has lessened many of the historical differences with the rest of the nation, the regional economy still remains distinct, especially in some states. Wyoming, for instance, still has the most unique industrial structure in the country. And Nebraska, New Mexico, and Oklahoma still rank among the top third of states with economies that differ from the rest of the nation. ; What industries make the Tenth District so different, and what can they tell us about the ...