Initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims are a weekly measure from the U.S. Department of Labor of how many new people have filed for unemployment benefits. A well-known leading indicator and one of the few official statistics released at a weekly frequency, initial UI claims are carefully monitored by economists for signs of turning points in economic activity. That said, they are at best... Read More

This is the second of two blog posts summarizing Creating Conversations on the Challenges and Opportunities Facing Rural Economic Development—a conference cohosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research on September 28–29, 2022, in western Michigan. As explained in greater detail in the first blog post, the conference featured t... Read More

This is the first of two blog posts summarizing Creating Conversations on the Challenges and Opportunities Facing Rural Economic Development—a conference cohosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research on September 28–29, 2022, in western Michigan. The conference featured two major segments. The first segment was a field trip to... Read More

Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. —Tony Robbins, as cited by Georgia Gann Dohrmann, Assistant Director of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission As public transit experts gathered at the Chicago Fed recently to confront post-pandemic challenges, one theme kept appearing: The pain points transit agencies and... Read More

Automation has been replacing or enhancing human labor for centuries now. But between advances in robotics and artificial intelligence and the spur of the Covid-19 pandemic, this seems an especially significant time in machines’ move toward taking over work that humans used to do. While job automation is a seemingly inexorable process, it is not necessarily an equitable one. Recent research fr... Read More

Affordability has been one of the dominant recent issues in the automotive industry. Average new car prices were at $48,763 in February, according to Kelley Blue Book, almost 30% higher than three years earlier, before the Covid-19 pandemic and its disruptions. David Gohlke (l.) of Argonne National Laboratory presents at the Chicago Fed’s 2023 Automotive Insights Symposium while Peter D... Read More

"Data are really great," says Leslie McGranahan, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s vice president and director of regional research. "But sometimes the stories behind the data help you understand the data. It's why we are seeing what we're seeing." Chicago Fed economists Leslie McGranahan (l.), Anna Paulson (r.), and David Oppedahl (far righ... Read More

2023 looks to be another dynamic year in the automotive business. The quickening transition to electric vehicles (EVs), fluctuating prices and interest rates, and uncertain consumer confidence all promise to impact what happens in this industry that plays such a pivotal role in the U.S. economy. Detroit-based Chic... Read More

On November 16, 2022, the Financial Markets Group (FMG) of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago hosted its ninth annual Fall Conference. The conference featured a keynote address from Commissioner Kristin N. Johnson and a fireside chat with Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero, both of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Lamont Black, a professor of finance at DePaul Universit... Read More

Despite the widely documented benefits of enrolling and completing a college degree, postsecondary enrollment has been declining overall since fall 2010. Declines in the number of individuals enrolling in college are worrisome to the colleges themselves, and researchers and the press wrote of the impending enrollment “crisis” prior to the Covid-19 pandemic (e.g., Grawe, 2017; and Bloomberg, 20... Read More