The recession and recovery resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic are unprecedented for a number of reasons. The abrupt, sharp drop in real GDP was larger than in any recession since the Great Depression. With the closure of non-essential businesses at the onset of the pandemic, the unemployment rate rose to never before seen levels. As non-essential businesses and secto... Read More

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a worldwide economic downturn. While the decline in economic activity has been substantial everywhere, within the U.S., the magnitudes of both the initial downturn and ongoing recovery have varied by state. In this blog post, I review the employment experiences of U.S. states since the onset of the pandemic, and I pay special attention to states in the Federal... Read More

In late May 2020, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago collaborated with the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center (IMEC) and the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center (MMTC) to conduct a survey on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on businesses affiliated with either of these two organizations. The survey was based on the methodology of the broader Chicago Fed Survey of Business Conditio... Read More

Summary In late April, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago collaborated with the executive associations of the chambers of commerce in its five District states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin) to conduct a survey on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on chamber members’ businesses. This survey was based on the methodology of the broader Chicago Fed Survey of Business C... Read More

Summary Growth in the Seventh Federal Reserve District remained below trend in the fourth quarter of 2019 as activity in the manufacturing sector continued to be soft. Slow growth worldwide is one important source of manufacturing’s weakness. Overall, our business contacts expect the pace of growth for their firms to continue to be slow in 2020, and very few expect a steep drop in demand ... Read More

Employment growth in the Midwest1 has been slow over the past 20 years. As figure 1 shows, since 2000, employment has gone up by just 3.3 percent in the Midwest, whereas it has risen by 21.5 percent in the rest of the U.S. The 2000s were particularly bad for the Midwest in terms of employment growth—employment in the region never fully recovered from the 2001 recession before the Great Recess... Read More

Summary Growth in the Seventh Federal Reserve District remained moderately below trend in the third quarter of 2019 as activity in the manufacturing sector continued to be soft. There were signs, however, that the slowdown in growth we’ve experienced over the past year and a half has abated. And while our business contacts expect the economy to continue to grow slowly, they are not antic... Read More

The Chicago metro area’s employment growth rate appears to have accelerated over the past year according to recent federal government data. But is that really the case? In this post, I show that because the employment growth data are based on a survey of employers, the apparent acceleration is probably the result of sampling error—and likely to be revised away as additional data become availa... Read More

Summary Growth in the Seventh Federal Reserve District continued to slow in the second quarter of 2019, and the pace is now moderately below trend. Growth slowed across all sectors, but the slowdown was particularly noticeable in the manufacturing and service sectors. In spite of the slowdown, our business contacts expect the economy to continue to grow over the coming year. Now let’... Read More

Uncertainties concerning trade policies have been impacting the U.S. economy, as well as those of its neighbors and trading partners in North America. The motor vehicle industry has been especially challenged by these uncertainties, as production operations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico are closely linked. A quarter-century ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement (N... Read More