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Discussion Paper
Firms' Employment and Wage Outlook Going Into 2025
Every November, the Richmond Fed asks businesses a series of questions about their expectations for hiring, wage adjustments, and other employment-related topics. This year, in addition to the usual set of questions, we asked firms if they have reduced the size of their workforce over the past three months and what workforce decisions they would make if business conditions deteriorated in the next six months.Consistent with past results, most responding businesses expect to maintain or increase employee headcount over the next 12 months. However, there were some shifts in responses compared ...
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
What's Behind Firms' Reported Improvements in Meeting Demand?
According to special question results from our most recent monthly business survey, Fifth District firms reported improvement in their ability to meet customer demand compared to earlier in the year. Moreover, the majority of respondents said they expect to fully meet customer demand in the next 12 months. Although firms have continued to take action to boost production, softening demand itself may be another reason for the reported improvements.
Discussion Paper
Fifth District Firms and the Prospect of Higher Input Prices
Since the middle of 2023, firms' year-ahead input price growth expectations have been relatively steady, hovering around 3 percent for manufacturers and between 4 to 5 percent for service providers. However, recent developments in trade and tariff policy have introduced new uncertainty into firms' decision-making. In December, our surveys showed little evidence that this uncertainty had made its way into firms' price or cost growth expectations. Data from our February surveys show a slight uptick in firms' expected growth in the prices they pay their suppliers.In addition to the slight uptick ...
Discussion Paper
How to Get the Workers?
There is evidence that labor markets are even tighter now than they were when the COVID-19 pandemic reached U.S. shores in 2020. Among other things, job openings are at a record high, wage growth is accelerating, and survey measures of employers, including our own Richmond Fed surveys, show an unprecedentedly tight labor market. In our March survey, we found that firms continue to struggle finding workers across skill levels, but particularly in the low- to mid-skill range. Even with the wage increases that firms are implementing, they find that applicants still turn down the higher wage ...
Discussion Paper
Fifth District Firms Are Optimistic Going Into 2025
Around the start of the new year, the Richmond Fed adds questions to its monthly business surveys to gauge Fifth District firms' expectations for their business and for the U.S. economy in the upcoming year. In the previous two years, firms were cautious in their expectations, with about half of firms optimistic while one in five firms were pessimistic about the coming year. (For previous analyses, follow these links for the 2023 outlook and the 2024 outlook.) This made sense as the past two years experienced residual effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, decades-high inflation, and an ...
Discussion Paper
Fifth District Firms Are Cautiously Optimistic About 2024 Despite Concerns
At the start of both 2023 and 2024, we asked our business survey panelists about their expectations for the upcoming year. In our recent December survey, we found that most manufacturing firms were pessimistic about the U.S. economy going into 2024 but were more bullish about their own-firm prospects. Additionally, manufacturers were more likely than services firms to expect lower revenue, employment, spending, and price growth in 2024 than they experienced before COVID-19.
Discussion Paper
Student Parents: The Power of Wraparound Supports
Many community college students juggle work and family responsibilities alongside their academic pursuits. Wraparound services — such as transportation assistance, child care, mental health counseling and housing — help students meet their non-academic needs, which improves colleges' retention and completion rates. These services also attract adult learners, a key population of community college students.As we have written about previously, funding wraparound services is complicated. Community colleges rely heavily on local, state, and federal funding for their academic programs, but this ...
Discussion Paper
Fifth District Employment: Findings From the June Business Surveys
In our June business surveys1, we asked Fifth District firms how their ability to hire workers has changed since last year and what their expectations are for their workforces over the next six months. Firms reported little change in their ability to hire workers compared to this time last year. Moreover, firms that experienced changes in their ability to hire workers, for better or for worse, cited changes in the labor pool — both in size and skills available — as the driving factor. Over the next six months, most firms expect to hold headcount steady. However, the minority of firms ...