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2023 UAW Contract Negotiations with Ford, GM, and Stellantis
The U.S. automotive industry is a large and critical part of the U.S. economy, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the Federal Reserve’s Seventh District, home of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.1 About 60% of the UAW members impacted by this year’s high-profile UAW labor negotiations with Ford, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis work in the Chicago Fed’s District.2 These three companies produce just over half of all their U.S. vehicle output, 40% of all U.S. engine plant output, and 75% of all U.S. transmission plant output in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan—three of the ...
Charging Ahead: Trends in Leasing for Battery Electric Vehicles
How do consumers acquire vehicles that feature new propulsion technology? This question is of specific interest in the context of the growing sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), vehicles that run exclusively on electricity. In this post, we look at trends in leasing for BEVs during the past decade or so, a period in which the electric vehicle market has seen remarkable growth.
Charging Ahead: Will the Growth of Electric Vehicles Change the Auto Manufacturing Footprint in North America?
The automotive industry has embarked on a major transition from manufacturing gasoline-powered vehicles to producing electric vehicles (EVs). This transition is impacting nearly every aspect of the industry, ranging from vehicle design and development all the way to vehicle fueling and repair. What does the transition to EVs portend for the production footprint of light vehicles (i.e., cars and light trucks) across North America through the end of this decade? In this Chicago Fed Insights article, we summarize our recently published research that addresses this question.
Financial Positions of U.S. Public Corporations: Part 1, Before the Pandemic
This blog is the first in a series that will discuss how the current pandemic affects the financial positions of publicly traded U.S. corporations, the potential implications of these financial developments, and the federal policy response. This first blog discusses the financial positions before the pandemic started. We document three facts: (1) the share of nonfinancial public companies with large amounts of leverage was elevated, suggesting financial fragility; however, (2) interest expenses were small for most firms due to the low level of interest rates; and (3) most firms had ...
Childcare Use and Expenses Among Families of Different Income Levels
As part of the Chicago Fed’s Spotlight on Childcare and the Labor Market, a targeted effort to understand how access to childcare can affect employment and the economy, we use data from a national survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau—the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)—to examine the childcare arrangements for young children (those under five years old) while their mothers were at work, in school, or otherwise not available and how much families paid for these arrangements in the recent past. We focus on the arrangements used and amounts paid by families with low ...
CDFIs: Crucial Partners in the Public Finance Ecosystem
Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) are vital partners with state and local governments in projects aimed at assisting communities of people with low and moderate incomes (LMI communities) across the United States. Serving as intermediaries between public, philanthropic, and private sources of capital, CDFIs help deploy resources to improve economic opportunity in these communities. Government entities at all levels (federal, state, and local) work with nongovernmental actors, and CDFIs have been such partners, particularly for investments related to infrastructure as well as ...
Impact of Student-Based Budgeting in Chicago Public Schools
Over the past 20 years, U.S. school districts have increasingly adopted funding models that aim to allocate money to schools based on individual student need. One such approach—weighted student funding—apportions funds to schools based on a combination of total enrollment and the characteristics of the students they serve. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) adopted such a funding model, known as student-based budgeting (SBB), beginning with the 2013–14 school year.
Recent UAW Contracts with Ford, GM, and Stellantis
The U.S. auto industry is highly cyclical and even when the overall industry is up or down, the fortunes of individual UAW-represented automakers have waxed and waned. What follows is a summary of previous rounds of bargaining between 2003 and 2019. Contracts during this period were for four years, though the parties could—and can in the future—agree to any term. This blog post first discusses recent trends in U.S. wages and market share for the UAW-represented firms to provide the long-term wage context of bargaining and then provides high-level summaries of recent bargaining rounds.
How Is the Challenge of Finding Childcare Affecting Labor Force Participation? Perspectives from Employers Across the Seventh District
Through the Chicago Fed Survey of Economic Conditions (CFSEC) and during roundtable discussions with business, nonprofit, and government leaders, the Chicago Fed asked employers from a variety of sectors for their perspectives on how childcare access has affected labor force availability.1 These survey and roundtable findings contribute to the Chicago Fed’s Spotlight on Childcare—an effort to increase our understanding of how the lack of access to childcare impedes labor force participation in the Seventh Federal Reserve District. In this article, we summarize the responses from over 100 ...
What’s New in CARTS 2.1? Updates to Our Index Tracking National Retail Sales
In this Chicago Fed Insights article, we provide an update on the Chicago Fed Advance Retail Trade Summary (CARTS). As readers may remember, CARTS debuted in mid-2021. A summary measure of multiple high-frequency indicators of retail sales (including payment card transactions, foot traffic, gas sales, and consumer sentiment), CARTS grew out of pandemic-era research that aimed to improve the timeliness and reliability of traditional measures of U.S. retail spending.