Traditional employment data are often lagged, so during the COVID-19 pandemic, economists and policymakers shifted to high-frequency data that may better capture rapidly changing conditions.

The Fifth District includes both urban and rural communities. How do we define urban and rural, and what do data tell us about the disparities?

Bottoms Up Sidebar

Craft brewers raise the bar in the American beer industry

The Bureau of Labor Statistics started releasing state-level data from the Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), giving a unique perspective on labor demand around our District.

This post looks at the current assessment of roads and bridges in the Fifth District and how states have recently allocated federal funds.

An estimated 30 percent of Fifth District businesses are minority-owned, but this trails the minority share of the population.

While most businesses surveyed have suffered some negative effects and loss of revenue as result of COVID-19, most remained open and operating, at least partially.

The measures taken to slow the spread of COVID-19 have not only led to a sharp decline in employment and an unprecedented rise in unemployment but have negatively impacted state and local governments that depend on income and sales taxes as primary sources of revenue.

Over the past several weeks, social distancing and shutdowns have impacted our economy. Fifth District firms continued to tell us how COVID-19 has affected their business operations in recent surveys.

On March 13, 2020, the President declared a national state of emergency and by March 16, every state and the District of Columbia had declared states of emergency, all due to the rapid escalation of positive cases of COVID-19. However, Fifth District firms were reporting impacts from the virus before the emergency declarations and the initiation of social distancing mandates in states and localities across the country.

A special survey on hiring and wages, conducted in November, showed that a majority of Fifth District firms expect to hire or hold payrolls steady and plan to use wage increases to attract and retain workers over the next twelve months.

As of December 2018, unemployment rates declined in every county and independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia from December 2017. But how do the most recent rates compare with previous lows?

Although changes in educational attainment, employment status, and median earnings were inconsistent across Fifth District jurisdictions in 2017, most saw lower unemployment and higher median earnings.

In June 2018, the Richmond Fed asked its survey participants about the expected impacts of the tariffs imposed on imported steel and aluminum. While about half of the firms surveyed expected negative impacts to their own businesses and to the U.S. economy, there was a good portion of firms that believed the tariffs would be good for the overall U.S. economy, even if their firms would not directly benefit.

In 2016, every Fifth District jurisdiction, along with the nation, saw an increase in the share of the over-25 population with a bachelor’s degree or higher. What else changed since 2015?

On Jan. 18, the Board of Governors released the most recent installment of the Beige Book report. With this report comes a new design. What changes can you expect, and why now?

This Regional Matters post examines manufacturing in the Fifth District.

A new Regional Matters post on District foreclosure and forfeiture rates.

In this new web series, we will focus on topics and data related to urban and regional economic issues, particularly those that are important to areas within the Fifth Federal Reserve District.