Examining The Recession’S Effects On Labor Markets
Four years after the onset of the Great Recession, labor market outcomes in the U.S. remain depressed.[More...]
View ArticleHow Big Is The Output Gap? More Perspectives From Our Business Inflation...
Opinions vary widely about how much slack there is in the economy these days. Some say a lot—some say not so much.[More...]
View ArticleTrends In Small Business Lending
In our previous survey conducted in April 2012, we found that firms applying for credit at large national banks had notably less success than firms that applied to small banks.[More...]
View ArticleSupporting Price Stability
All of the five questions that Chairman Ben Bernanke addressed in his October 1 speech to the Economic Club of Indiana rank high on the list of most frequently asked questions I encounter in my own...
View ArticleDivergent Jobs Reports: Will the Real State of the Labor Market Please Stand Up?
The September employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was predestined to create a significant amount of buzz. But the confluence of headline jobs growth at a modest clip of...
View ArticleThe (Maybe Not So) Simple Arithmetic of Unemployment and Labor Force...
I have precisely zero interest in jumping into any fray from the before and after of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Jack Welch, wherein he defends his previous comments on the...
View ArticleInvestor Participation In The Home-Buying Market
What is the investor share of the home-buying market, and in what direction is the trend moving? We have been asking ourselves this question for the past few months, because the answer can help to...
View ArticleHas Fed Behavior Changed?
To the titular question, Steve Williamson thinks the answer is "yes."[More...]
View ArticleReading Labor Markets
When the September employment report was released on October 5, the top-line payroll employment gain for the month, as reported in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) establishment survey,...
View ArticleGetting the Questions Right
Among the plethora of post-election exit-poll results, the CNBC website highlights a particularly interesting response, linked from the mega-blog Instapundit with the title "Voters Worry More About...
View Article(Fiscal) Cliff Notes
Since it is indisputably the policy question of the moment, here are a few of my own observations regarding the "fiscal cliff." Throughout, I will rely on the analysis of the Congressional Budget...
View ArticleRose-Colored Glasses Make the Future Look Blurry: Sales Uncertainty as Seen...
Uncertainty is widely cited as being a significant contributor to the economy's subpar growth. Reddy and Thurm report in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that "half of the nation's 40 biggest publicly...
View ArticleGazelles, and Why They Matter
A gazelle, as you may recall from your favorite wildlife show, is one of those antelope-like animals that run around in herds across the plains and are known for their speed. Sheltered by the herd at...
View ArticleAnticipating Growth Despite A Slowdown? Results From The New Small Business...
The latest reading on the Wells Fargo/Gallup's Small Business Index indicated business conditions for small firms dropped to the lowest levels since July 2010 (see the chart), and index also...
View ArticleNominal GDP Targeting: Still A Skeptic
In a few days the clock will run out on another year of disappointing economic growth in the United States and, generally speaking, in the world. It is inevitable and appropriate, then, that the...
View ArticleInflation Versus Price-Level Targeting In Practice
In last Wednesday's Financial Times, Scott Sumner issued a familiar indictment of "modern central banking practice" for failing to adopt nominal gross domestic product (GDP) targets, for which he has...
View ArticleStill A Skeptic: Addressing A Few Questions About Nominal GDP Targeting
In a comment to last week's post on inflation versus price-level targeting, David Beckworth asks the following (referring back to an even earlier post on nominal gross domestic product (NGDP)...
View Article2013 Business Hiring Plans: Employment, Effort, Hours, And Fiscal Uncertainty
How much is fiscal uncertainty holding back hiring? The answer seems to depend on whom you ask. Early in January, the Atlanta Fed spoke to 670 businesses in the Southeast about employment.[More...]
View ArticleBeing Ahead Of The Curve: Not Always A Good Thing
Our friends at the New York Fed have a nifty interactive graphic that compares the unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, and employment-to-population ratio over the last five business...
View ArticleThe Same-Old, Same-Old Labor Market
In his March 24 Wall Street Journal piece on declining government payrolls, Sudeep Reddy offers up a key observation:[More...]
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