Every month, millions of workers search for new jobs although they already have one. About one-tenth of these searchers switch employers in the following month. However, most of the job switchers in the United States never reported having looked for a job. This implies that, rather than those...

This Economic Letter introduces the new Tech Pulse Index, a measure that tracks economic activity in the U.S. information technology (IT) sector. The index first appeared under the sponsorship of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; due to substantial revisions of the econometric model and...

This Letter examines how changes in wealth and credit may be affecting household and aggregate labor supply.

Goods and services from China accounted for only 2.7% of U.S. personal consumption expenditures in 2010, of which less than half reflected the actual costs of Chinese imports. The rest went to U.S. businesses and workers transporting, selling, and marketing goods carrying the "Made in China"...

Commercial real estate capitalization rates have been found to be good indicators of expected returns in commercial properties. Recent declines in these cap rates appear to be signaling a commercial real estate rebound, indicating improved investor expectations of price growth in the market....

Despite a severe recession and modest recovery, real wage growth has stayed relatively solid. A key reason seems to be downward nominal wage rigidities, that is, the tendency of employers to avoid cutting the dollar value of wages. This phenomenon means that, in nominal terms, wages tend not to...

Commodity prices have soared several times in recent years, raising concerns that overall inflation could rise substantially. However, crops, oil, and natural gas make up only about 5% of the cost of U.S. consumer goods and services. Thus, about one percentage point of the 10% cumulative...

Some types of jobs lost during recessions are never recovered, which suggests some unemployed workers must change careers. However, data on hiring during recessions shows the fraction of unemployed workers who change their industry or occupation declines rather than increases. This reflects in...

In 2009, strong growth in productivity allowed firms to lay off large numbers of workers while holding output relatively steady. This behavior threw a wrench into the long-standing relationship between changes in GDP and changes in the unemployment rate, known as Okun’s law. If Okun’s law...

Some analysts have raised the question of whether the unprecedented declines in house values, which have been the hallmark of the recent recession, might be artificially dampening core inflation readings. However, a close examination of recent inflation data shows that the weakness in housing...