37 posts on "New Jersey"
May 20, 2024
Supply Chain Disruptions Have Eased, But Remain a Concern
Supply chain disruptions became a major headache for businesses in the aftermath of the pandemic. Indeed, in October 2021, nearly all firms in our regional business surveys reported at least some difficulty obtaining the supplies they needed. These supply chain disruptions were a key contributor to the surge in inflation that occurred as the economy recovered from the pandemic recession. In this post, we present new measures of supply availability from our Business Leaders Survey and Empire State Manufacturing Survey that closely track the New York Fed’s Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI). We will begin publishing these data on a monthly basis starting in June. These indexes indicate that supply availability had generally been improving since early 2023, but over the past couple of months, improvement has stalled. This trend is concerning since our May Supplemental Survey indicates that between a third and a half of businesses in the region are experiencing difficulties obtaining supplies, and many are reducing operations and raising prices to compensate, though to a lesser extent than a few years ago.
May 7, 2024
Many Places Still Have Not Recovered from the Pandemic Recession
More than four years have passed since the onset of the pandemic, which resulted in one of the sharpest and deepest economic downturns in U.S. history. While the nation as a whole has recovered the jobs that were lost during the pandemic recession, many places have not. Indeed, job shortfalls remain in more than a quarter of the country’s metro areas, including many in the New York-Northern New Jersey region. In fact, while employment is well above pre-pandemic levels in Northern New Jersey, jobs have only recently recovered in and around New York City, and most of upstate New York—like much of the Rust Belt—still has not fully recovered and has some of the largest job shortfalls in the country.
Posted at 11:00 am in Labor Market, New Jersey, New York, Pandemic, Recession, Regional Analysis | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 21, 2024
Businesses See Inflationary Pressures Moderating
Shortly after the recovery from the pandemic recession began, the U.S. economy entered a period of high inflation as surging demand, severe supply disruptions, and worker shortages combined to create large imbalances and inflationary pressures in the economy. More recently, however, inflationary pressures have been moderating. Indeed, the inflation rate as measured by the consumer price index (CPI) has come down from its recent peak of 9.1 percent in the summer of 2022 to 3.1 percent at the start of 2024. Have inflationary pressures also moderated for local businesses in the New York–Northern New Jersey region? The New York Fed’s February business surveys asked firms about increases in their costs and prices. Results indicate that the pace of increase in costs, wages, and prices have all slowed considerably over the past year. Moreover, firms in the region expect cost and price increases, as well as the overall inflation rate, to moderate further in the year ahead.
December 1, 2023
Recent Disparities in Earnings and Employment
The New York Fed recently released its latest set of Equitable Growth Indicators (EGIs). Updated quarterly, the EGIs continue to report demographic and geographic differences in inflation, earnings (real and nominal), employment, and consumer spending (real and nominal) at the national level. This release also launches a set of national wealth EGIs (which will be examined more closely on Liberty Street Economics early next year). Going forward, EGI releases will also include a set of regional EGIs, which will present disparities in inflation, earnings (real and nominal), employment, and consumer spending (real and nominal) in our region. Drawing on the just released EGIs, in this post, we present recent gender gaps in the labor market at the national and regional levels. We provide a picture of how gender wage and employment disparities have evolved since the pandemic, examining and contrasting gaps at the national and regional level. We find that the gaps between the employment rates and earnings of men and women have declined steadily following the pandemic, but have declined perceptibly more so in our region than in the nation.
Posted at 7:00 am in Demographics, Inequality, New Jersey, New York, Regional Analysis, Unemployment | Permalink
November 16, 2023
Small Business Recovery after Natural Disasters in the Fed’s Second District
A previous Liberty Street Economics post found that minority-owned small businesses in the Federal Reserve’s Second District have been particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Here we focus on the aftermath of disasters (such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts, and winter storms) and examine disparities in the ability of these firms to reopen their businesses and access disaster relief. Our results indicate that while white- and minority-owned firms remain closed for similar durations, the latter are more reliant on external funding from government and private sources to cope with disaster losses.
November 15, 2023
How Do Natural Disasters Affect Small Business Owners in the Fed’s Second District?
In this post, we follow up on the previous Liberty Street Economics post in this series by studying other impacts of extreme weather on the real sector. Data from the Federal Reserve’s Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS) shed light on how small businesses in the Second District are impacted by natural disasters (such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, droughts, and winter storms). Among our findings are that increasing shares of small business firms in the region sustain losses from natural disasters, with minority-owned firms suffering losses at a disproportionately higher rate than white-owned firms. For many minority-owned firms, these losses make up a larger portion of their total revenues. In a companion post, we will explore the post-disaster recovery of small firms in the Second District: how long do they remain closed and what are their sources of disaster relief?
November 9, 2023
Transition Risks in the Fed’s Second District and the Nation
Climate change may pose two types of risk to the economy—from policies and consumer preferences as the energy system transitions to a lower dependence on carbon (in other words, transition risks) or from damages stemming from the direct impacts of climate change (physical risks). In this post, we follow up on our previous post that studied the exposure of the Federal Reserve’s Second District to physical risks by considering how transition risks affect different parts of the District and how they differentially affect the District relative to the nation. We find that, relative to other regions of the U.S., the economy of the Second District has considerably less exposure to fossil fuels. However, the cost of reducing even this relatively low economic dependence on carbon is still likely to be considerable.
Posted at 7:00 am in Climate Change, Employment, Inequality, New Jersey, New York, Regional Analysis | Permalink | Comments (1)
November 8, 2023
Comparing Physical Risk: The Fed’s Second District versus the Nation
In this post, we discuss the climate-related risks faced by the Federal Reserve’s Second District and compare these with risks faced by the nation as a whole. The comparison helps contextualize the risks while framing them in the broader context of a changing climate at the national level. We show that the continental Second District—an area consisting of New York State, the twelve northern-most counties of New Jersey, and Fairfield County in Connecticut—faces fewer and less severe climate-related physical risks than the nation as a whole. However, the areas that comprise the Second District still rank somewhat high in key risks that include “heat stress.” This holds true especially for New York City.
April 13, 2023
How Did New York City’s Economy Weather the Pandemic?
When COVID-19 first struck the U.S. in early 2020, New York City was the epicenter of the pandemic. By early April, there was an unthinkable scale of suffering, with massive hospitalizations and roughly 800 fatalities per day, accounting for nearly half of the nationwide total. The rapid spread was facilitated by the city’s extraordinarily high population density and widespread use of mass transit. What followed was a quick and massive shutdown of restaurants, retail stores, personal services, offices, and more. And the shutdowns, of course, led to widespread job losses. Between February and May, one out of five jobs in the city vanished; in the restaurant industry, 70 percent of jobs were lost. Although the pandemic didn’t go away, the city’s economy has recovered steadily, aside from a brief but sharp setback in late 2020. By early 2023, New York had finally reversed just about all of the total job loss. In this post, we look at the contours of the city’s recovery as a possible guide to where we go from here.
February 16, 2022
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 reported to be nearly three times its normal level. While the path of recovery remains highly uncertain, firms generally expect conditions to improve in the months ahead and many are still adding or planning to add staff.
RSS Feed
Follow Liberty Street Economics
