The most obvious economic cost of recessions is that workers become involuntarily unemployed. During the average business cycle contraction, total employment declines by about 1.5 percent, the unemployment rate rises by 2.7 percentage points, and it takes almost two years before employment...

The distribution of manufacturing employment across regions of the United States has changed tremendously over time. Shares of manufacturing employment in older, northern regions of the country have declined markedly relative to shares in the Sunbelt regions. But the shifting of manufacturing...

Using two decades of annual data, we explore the links between real exchange rates and employment, wages and overtime activity in specific U.S. manufacturing industries. Across two-digit industry levels of aggregation, exchange rate movements do not have large effects on numbers of jobs or on...

Creating jobs is often the primary goal of economic development policy. To help target their job creation efforts, policymakers generally examine net changes in the official employment figures. But relying solely on net changes can often hide important gross changes that influence the dynamics...

Does an inappropriate industry mix and structure condemn rural areas to a competitive disadvantage with respect to urban areas? This study of employment changes from 1980-85 in North Carolina counties suggests not.

This article examines job growth in the district's key manufacturing industries and in the seven district states. The article shows that while thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost since the recovery began, the decline in the district has been less than in the nation. The primary...