Search Results
Journal Article
Recent Findings on Residential Instability in Oakland
Safe, stable, and affordable housing is central to ensuring healthy, sustainable, and inclusive communities. Amid COVID-19-related economic shocks and a worsening housing crisis, residents in cities across California are struggling to keep up with the rising costs of housing. This report draws from a unique, longitudinal dataset of over 14,000 residents to examine residential instability–in the form of moving and household crowding–in the City of Oakland, California. It presents trends from the last 20 years, with an additional focus on patterns emerging during the COVID-19 pandemic.The ...
Journal Article
Lessons Learned from Small Business Lending During COVID-19: A Case Study of the California Rebuilding Fund
As the COVID-19 pandemic forced California businesses to shut down in March 2020, the fate of small businesses, which often had fewer reserves to draw upon when trying to survive the shutdowns, became particularly concerning. Federal aid measures, including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), brought relief to many business owners, but their deployment also confirmed what many small business advocates feared: business owners in the most vulnerable communities and underrepresented business owners often struggled to obtain assistance. At the same time, small business lending capital dried ...
Journal Article
Steering Toward Sustainable Growth
The inflation outlook combined with a strong labor market leave no doubt that further monetary policy tightening is appropriate. The question is, how much and how quickly? The appropriate path of policy confronts the economic headwinds immediately ahead while also laying the groundwork for the economy we want in the future. The following is adapted from remarks by the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco to the Center for Business and Economic Research, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on April 20.
Journal Article
Comparing Pandemic Unemployment to Past U.S. Recoveries
Unemployment fell at a slow and steady rate in the 10 cyclical recoveries from 1949 through 2019. These historical patterns also apply to the recovery from the pandemic recession after accounting for the unprecedented burst of temporary layoffs early in the pandemic followed by their rapid reversal from April to November 2020. Unemployment for other reasons—which has been most important in other recent recoveries—did not start declining until November 2020. Since then, unemployment for other reasons has declined at a faster pace than its historical average.
Journal Article
The Rapidly Growing Home Care Sector and Labor Force Participation
The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on the growing need for home care workers, who support their elderly and disabled clients in their homes with activities of daily living, and on the challenges of recruiting and retaining workers in the industry. This brief describes the state of the home care sector and its connection to the economy. It looks at home care as a rapidly growing industry facing significant challenges and at home care’s role in enabling working-aged family members to participate in the labor force,i which supports the Federal Reserve’s maximum employment mandateThere is ...
Journal Article
Pandemic Homebuyers: Who Were They, and Where Did They Buy?
Stable and affordable housing is foundational for participating in the economy, and homeownership is the primary form of wealth accumulation for most American families. Housing demand changed as households responded to the economic and social environment of the COVID-19 pandemic. As households moved because of these changing conditions and homebuying surged, many popular narratives emerged around migration patterns, “hot” places to buy, and what types of buyers were succeeding in the market.This research brief employs mortgage data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) to examine ...
Speech
Steering Toward Sustainable Growth
Presentation to the UNLV Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) Spring Outlook 2022,April 20, 2022, by Mary C. Daly, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Speech
This Time Is Different…Because We Are
Presentation to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall, Los Angeles, CA, February 23, 2022, by Mary C. Daly, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Discussion Paper
Households Confront the End of Pandemic-Era Assistance Programs
The U.S. government, beginning in March 2020, took extraordinary measures in response to the emergence and spread of the novel coronavirus. Through policy changes and major spending bills, the federal government directed funds to help states, localities, and households manage the economic challenges caused by the pandemic. Two of the many measures that the government took to directly aid households were increasing the flexibility and benefits of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and pausing federal student loan payments. Now that enhanced SNAP benefits have ended and ...
Journal Article
Pandemic Unemployment Effects across Demographic Groups
Workers in service industries and occupations with a lot of close social contact suffered the highest job losses during the pandemic recession. This differed from previous downturns, which tended to have their most severe effects on industries with high concentrations of manual labor. As a result, the unemployment impact of the pandemic on different demographic groups has not followed historical patterns, particularly for Asian, Black, and female workers. The unemployment gap between these racial groups has not been as wide as previous economic fluctuations would have predicted.