Part of the U.S. federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) is economic assistance for state, local, and tribal governments. This assistance is distributed through the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) program. Funds allocated by the program can only be used for costs incurred after March 3, 2021, and they must be obligated by the end of 20... Read More

Though the weather changes frequently in the middle part of the U.S., adverse climate-related changes represent a serious risk to Midwest agriculture and could impair the region’s financial health, especially given the farm sector’s importance in this region. Furthermore, the health of agriculture remains vital to the banking system of the region, with nearly 30% of U.S. agricultural banks1 headq... Read More

The Seventh Federal Reserve District1 and the entire nation both experienced slower growth in 2022 than in 2021, which was a year of very strong growth following the very deep pandemic recession. Growth in both the Seventh District and the country as a whole was closer to their respective long-run trends. A tight labor market and supply chain issues were two of the big economic stories of 20... Read More

Business cycles are periodic fluctuations in economic activity around its long-term historical trend. Over the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has gone through several business cycles, with each one involving a recession phase and expansion phase.1 No business cycle is exactly the same in terms of what led to the recession, which sectors of the economy were most adversely affected, and how the e... Read More

On September 28–29, 2022, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research will cohost a conference called Creating Conversations on the Challenges and Opportunities Facing Rural Economic Development in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ahead of this event, we provide a primer on how some governmental institutions define rural and related terminology to help establi... Read More

In this blog post, our primary aim is to examine whether and how moving patterns between states, metropolitan areas, and other locations across the U.S. have changed since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Using migration data from United Van Lines,1 we compare migration patterns in 2018 and 2019, before the pandemic started within the U.S., with those in 2020 and 2... Read More

During the pandemic the federal government provided multiple rounds of fiscal support for state and local governments, businesses, and households. One of the larger packages came from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021. Enacted on March 11, 2021, ARPA provides $1.9 trillion in total funding, with $350 billion in support for state and local governments. In this blog post, I outline the s... Read More

The Covid-19 pandemic caused a massive worldwide economic shock. Within the United States, no region was spared. The state with the smallest employment decline at the beginning of the pandemic—Wyoming—still lost 9% of its workers from January through April of 2020. Moreover, there were six states—Hawaii, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont—that saw employment drop by over 20... Read More

When analyzing an area’s economic growth, economists commonly classify the determinants of growth as being either cyclical or structural. A cyclical factor plays out over a short period of time and typically has a small effect beyond then. In contrast, a structural factor can affect an area’s growth over many years or even decades. The Covid-19 pandemic is largely a cyclical event that has domina... Read More

The Seventh District (and the nation) experienced strong growth during 2021 as the economy recovered from the pandemic recession. But the ebbs and flows of the pandemic continue to hold sway over the pace of economic activity and prevented a complete recovery. The labor market tightened considerably over the year, while supply chain constraints held back growth in manu... Read More