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Journal Article
New from the Richmond Fed’s Regional Matters blog
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
New Insights on Dual Enrollment Students From the Survey of Community College Outcomes
Dual enrollment programs exist for high school students to take college-level coursework, earn college credit, and sometimes even a credential or degree, prior to graduating high school. These programs are different from other alternatives such as Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB). First, dual enrollment is offered through a higher education institution, such as a community college. Second, these students receive college credit for a course if they receive a certain grade. AP and IB courses can lead to college credit, but only if the student gets a passing grade on ...
Briefing
Commuting Patterns and Characteristics of Fifth District Counties
This article extends our previous work on the categorization of counties in the Fifth District based on their economic connectivity. Using commuting patterns to proxy for connectivity, we group counties into four categories. We next compare our classification with the USDA/ERS RUCC classification system. Finally, we characterize each category using different socioeconomic indicators. We claim that the information conveyed by this study is relevant when designing regionally targeted policies.
Discussion Paper
Are Fifth District Firms Revisiting Their Prices Less Often Amid Cooling Inflation?
The Richmond Fed's monthly business surveys of Fifth District firms gauge regional firm dynamics in pricing. We carefully monitor changes in firms' realized prices as well as their pricing expectations, especially since inflation began to accelerate in 2021 and 2022. Early last year, we examined how firms began to adjust their prices more frequently as firms' price forecasts became less accurate and uncertainty rose, as evidenced by a rising standard deviation of price growth expectations.
Discussion Paper
The Price of Tariffs on Fifth District Businesses
December data from our monthly business surveys and fourth quarter data from The CFO Survey suggested that firms were optimistic about their own businesses and the overall economy going into 2025. This rise in optimism, however, was accompanied by several concerns. One concern was the potential for additional tariffs on imports.One way to gauge the potential impact of tariffs on firms — especially in December before there were more specifics about future tariff policy — was to gauge their international exposure. Most December survey respondents reported that they do not sell goods or ...
Discussion Paper
Employment Change: Are Workers Coming or Going?
One of the most cited measures in the U.S. economy is the net number of jobs gained in a month. But that net gain (e.g., 272,000 jobs gained in May) reflects an enormous amount of churn in the labor market as millions of workers gain new jobs (new hires) and millions lose or leave their jobs (involuntary/voluntary separations) in any given month. At a micro level, if firms report a net job gain, they have either increased hiring or kept hiring steady and experienced a decrease in separations. If firms report that their net employment gains are attributed more to declines in separations than ...
Discussion Paper
Non-Credit Workforce Programs at Community Colleges
Community colleges differ from four-year institutions in key ways, including how programs are distributed across credit and non-credit academic divisions. While nearly all enrolled students at four-year institutions are in for-credit programs, community college students are much more likely to be in non-credit programs, which are shorter in term and typically focus on skills and credentials that are tied to specific occupations.A growing number of community college students are enrolled in non-credit programs across the Fifth District, but traditional data sources do not capture information ...
Discussion Paper
Is Wage Growth Normalizing? What Fifth District Businesses Are Saying About Wages
In the past few years, firms across the nation have reported increased wages due, at least in part, to a supply of labor that cannot keep up with robust demand. Last July, we wrote about how Fifth District firms reported notable acceleration in the growth rates of both realized and expected wages. More recently, wage growth has declined, and a rising share of firms expect their wage growth for 2024 to be "about normal." However, wage growth remains above pre-COVID-19 levels. Our business surveys suggest that wage growth might remain elevated for some time.