Search Results
Journal Article
Will Tariffs Touch Off an Inflationary Impulse? Business Execs Think So.
Following the inflationary surge from 2021 to 2023, which was touched off by supply chain constraints and shipping bottlenecks, we evaluate a new panel of own-firm price and unit cost growth expectations in the Atlanta Fed's Survey of Business Uncertainty for signs that the anticipated impact from tariffs is broadening beyond directly affected firms. We find evidence for the potential of tariffs to touch off another bout of high inflation. First, firms that are directly exposed to tariffs have increased their year-ahead price growth expectations sharply (by 0.7 percentage points). Second, ...
Journal Article
What Do Financial Officers Predict for the Labor Market?
Business leader surveys can be an important and reliable source for insights into future labor market conditions, particularly for expected wage growth. Survey responses from financial executives regarding their expectations for wages at their firms have closely tracked subsequent actual U.S. nominal wage growth since 2002, outperforming household survey projections in their accuracy. Estimates for this year point to continued nominal wage growth in 2026. Respondents also expect employment growth to moderate, though their projections reflect uncertainty regarding potential gains in workers’ ...
Discussion Paper
Businesses in the Tri-State Region Struggling to Weather the Coronavirus Outbreak
As a result of the coronavirus outbreak, New York State, New Jersey, and Connecticut have closed nonessential businesses and schools and asked residents to stay home in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. These actions are unprecedented, and the economic impacts are likely to be temporary but severe, and difficult to track and measure. With conditions changing so rapidly, timely data on the economic impacts of the outbreak and resultant policies on businesses and people are both scarce and important. In this post, we provide some very recent information on the economic effects of the ...
Discussion Paper
February Regional Business Surveys Find Widespread Supply Disruptions
Business activity increased in the region’s manufacturing sector in recent weeks but continued to decline in the region’s service sector, continuing a divergent trend seen over the past several months, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s February regional business surveys. Looking ahead, however, businesses expressed widespread optimism about the near-term outlook, with service firms increasingly confident that the business climate will be better in six months. The surveys also found that supply disruptions were widespread, with manufacturing firms reporting longer ...
Discussion Paper
April Regional Service-Sector Survey Points to A Long-Awaited Rebound
While the manufacturing sector typically drives recessions and recoveries more than the service sector, the opposite has been true during the pandemic recession. Finally this month, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s April business surveys point to a solid increase in service sector activity as well as continued strength in manufacturing activity in the New York-Northern New Jersey region, marking the first signs of widespread growth since the pandemic began. While manufacturing activity had been increasing through much of the pandemic, service sector activity had declined for thirteen ...
Discussion Paper
The Omicron Wave Stalled Growth and Led to High Absenteeism in the Region
Even before the start of the new year, businesses in the tri-state region were hampered by supply disruptions, rising input costs, and difficulty finding adequate staff. On top of these challenges, the Omicron wave dealt another setback to the regional economy. With infections running high, many businesses were forced to deal with a combination of reduced demand from customers and renewed absenteeism among workers. Indeed, our regional business surveys indicate that economic growth stalled in early 2022 as firms continued to struggle to find workers. Moreover, employee absenteeism was ...
Discussion Paper
AI and the Labor Market: Will Firms Hire, Fire, or Retrain?
The rapid rise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to dramatically change the labor market, and indeed possibly even the nature of work itself. However, how firms are adjusting their workforces to accommodate this emerging technology is not yet clear. Our August regional business surveys asked manufacturing and service firms special topical questions about their use of AI, and how it is changing their workforces. Most firms that report expected AI use in the next six months plan to retrain their workforces, with far fewer reporting adjustments to planned headcounts.
Briefing
What Drives Business Cycles?
There is no clear pattern as to whether inflation tends to rise or fall during recessions.The apparent lack of correlation masks the fact that inflation has in fact risen and fallen with GDP over individual business cycles.The inconsistent historical patterns wash out on average but suggest policymakers should use data to discern the underlying drivers of any specific business cycle.
Briefing
Predicting PCE Using the Richmond Fed Price Measure
The Richmond Fed survey measure of price changes comes out a month earlier than the PCE measure of inflation. Because the Richmond Fed price measure is known earlier, we can use the contemporaneous measure to provide an estimate of inflation.An empirical model with contemporaneous and past inflation changes — as measured by the Richmond Fed's price survey — notably reduces the out-of-sample forecast error obtained from a benchmark random walk model of inflation.Using the Richmond Fed price survey data prior to the release of September PCE, we forecast September PCE inflation to move from ...
Briefing
How Much Financial Help Do People Give and Receive? Evidence from the Understanding America Survey
The Understanding America Study has added a module recording the transfers that respondents have given to and/or received from their family and friends.The module includes information on financial transfers of wealth, along with in-kind transfers of services such as room and board or caregiving, and these variables can be linked to the broader UAS dataset.In this article, we describe and summarize the variables in the new module. The data indicate that transfers are widespread, usually small but sometimes substantial, and most commonly from parents to adult children.