136 posts on "Regional Analysis"
September 25, 2019
Minimum Wage Impacts along the New York‑Pennsylvania Border
Bram, Karahan, and Moore gauge the effects of New York’s recent minimum-wage hikes by comparing employment and average earnings levels in low-wage sectors in New York-Pennsylvania border counties.
June 24, 2019
Just Released: New Regional Employment Data Now Available
Regional employment data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are a critically important tool used to track and assess local economic conditions on a timely basis. However, the primary data used for this purpose are monthly survey-based estimates that are revised once per year, and these revisions can sometimes be substantial and surprising. As a result, initial readings of these data can lead to conclusions about employment trends that may later change. It is possible to anticipate these revisions in advance of their release using a second publicly available data set released by the BLS. Like some of our colleagues at other Federal Reserve Banks, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is now performing an “early benchmark” of initial monthly employment releases throughout the year and making these benchmarked data available to the public on a monthly basis. Our early benchmarked estimates tend to more closely track revised data than the initial releases do, and can help policymakers and the public better monitor regional economic conditions on a timely basis.
April 18, 2019
Just Released: The New York Fed’s New Regional Economy Website
Jaison R. Abel, Jason Bram, Richard Deitz, and Jonathan Hastings The New York Fed today unveiled a newly designed website on the regional economy that offers convenient access to a wide array of regional data, analysis, and research that the Bank makes available to the public. Focusing specifically on the Federal Reserve’s Second District, which […]
Posted at 11:01 am in Employment, Labor Market, New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, Regional Analysis, Unemployment | Permalink
February 6, 2019
Where Are Manufacturing Jobs Coming Back?
As we outlined in our previous post, the United States lost close to six million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010 but since then has gained back almost one million. In this post, we take a closer look at the geographic dimension of this modest rebound in manufacturing jobs. While job losses during the 2000s were fairly widespread across the country, manufacturing employment gains since then have been concentrated in particular parts of the country. Indeed, these gains were especially large in “auto alley”—a narrow motor vehicle production corridor stretching from Michigan south to Alabama—while much of the Northeast continued to shed manufacturing jobs. Closer to home, many of the metropolitan areas in the New York-Northern New Jersey region have been left out of this rebound and are continuing to shed manufacturing jobs, though Albany has bucked this trend with one of the strongest performances in the country.
December 4, 2018
Just Released: Labor Markets in the Region Are Exceptionally Tight
At today’s economic press briefing, we examined labor market conditions across our District, which includes New York State, Northern New Jersey, and Fairfield County, Connecticut, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. As the island economies continue to recover and rebuild from the destruction caused by last year’s hurricanes, employment has edged up in Puerto Rico and stabilized in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Meanwhile, as has been true throughout the expansion, New York City remains an engine of job growth, while employment gains have been more moderate in Northern New Jersey and fairly sluggish across most of upstate New York. Nonetheless, it has become more difficult for firms to find workers throughout the New York-Northern New Jersey region. It may not be terribly surprising that labor markets have tightened in and around New York City, where job growth has been strong, but labor markets have also tightened in parts of upstate New York, even in places where there has been little or no job growth. This is because labor markets are tightening as a result of changes in both labor demand and labor supply. In upstate New York, a decline in the labor force has reduced the pool of available workers.
November 14, 2018
Just Released: New York State’s Community Colleges are Successfully Partnering with Employers
Community colleges frequently work with local employers to help shape the training of students and incumbent workers. This type of engagement has become an increasingly important strategy for community colleges to help students acquire the right skills for available jobs, and also helps local employers find and retain workers with the training they need. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York conducted a survey of community colleges in New York State with the goal of documenting the amount and types of these kinds of activities taking place. Our report, Employer Engagement by Community Colleges in New York State, summarizes the findings of our survey.
Posted at 12:00 pm in Education, Human Capital, Labor Market, New York, Regional Analysis | Permalink
September 28, 2018
Puerto Rico Post‑Maria: Twelve Months of Hardship
Puerto Rico recently observed the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria—the most destructive storm to hit the Commonwealth since the San Felipe Segundo hurricane in 1928. Maria, combined with Hurricane Irma, which had glanced the island about two weeks prior, is estimated to have caused nearly 3,000 deaths and tens of billions of dollars of physical damage Millions went without power for weeks, in most cases months. Basic services—water, sewage, telecommunications, medical care, schools—suffered massive disruptions. While it is difficult to assign a cost to all the suffering endured by Puerto Rico’s population, we can now at least get a better read on the economic effect of the storms. In this blog post, we look at a few key economic indicators to gauge the negative effects of the storms and the extent of the subsequent rebound—not only for the Commonwealth as a whole, but for its various geographic areas and industry sectors. We also examine data from the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel to assess how well households held up financially and what effects the home mortgage foreclosure and payment moratoria had.
August 16, 2018
Just Released: August Regional Survey—Businesses See Tariffs Raising Prices
This week, we released our August surveys of manufacturers and service firms. Our Supplemental Survey Report, released this morning, reveals how businesses view the effects of recent trade policy on their costs, prices, sales, and profits. The results suggest that recent tariffs are raising both input costs and selling prices for local businesses, and these effects appear to be more widespread for manufacturers than for service firms.
July 18, 2018
Just Released: Beige Book Points to Moderate Growth and Tight Labor Markets
The New York Fed’s latest Beige Book report—based on information collected through July 9—points to sustained moderate growth and tight labor markets in the region. Manufacturers and wholesalers noted a persistent rise in economic activity over the first half of this year. However, a number of contacts in these sectors remarked that tariffs have raised their costs, and uncertainty about future trade policy was cited as a concern by businesses in a variety of industries. Meanwhile, businesses in most service industries continue to report flat to modestly expanding activity. And while consumer spending has remained fairly steady, consumer confidence edged up to a cyclical high, in large part due to an exceptionally positive assessment of the labor market.
Posted at 2:15 pm in Regional Analysis | Permalink
July 9, 2018
U.S. Virgin Islands’ Economy Hit Hard by Irma and Maria
In the nine months that have passed since Hurricanes Irma and Maria ravaged the Caribbean, much interest has been focused on Puerto Rico and its roughly 3.3 million American citizens, who weathered the largest blackout in U.S. history. However, far less attention has been paid to the U.S. Virgin Islands, even though St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. John, and a number of smaller islands suffered comparable devastation. This is partly attributable to their much smaller population: the U.S. Virgin Islands (“Virgin Islands”) is home to roughly 105,000 people—1/30th Puerto Rico’s population. Even so, this territory is also part of the United States and the New York Fed’s district. In this post, we examine roughly six months of economic and related data on the Virgin Islands’ economy to better ascertain the extent of disruption and subsequent recovery from the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
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