During the last several years, concern has increased that changes in the financial system have made it harder for rural banks to attract enough deposits to meet local credit demands. While urban banks may face some of the same problems, it is widely believed that funding pressures have increased...

Labor markets in the Tenth District are tighter now than at any time in recent memory. The steady fall of unemployment rates in recent years has led many analysts to wonder if future economic growth in the region could be restricted by labor shortages. The district's labor market is actually...

The movement of people into and out of a state can have important implications for the state’s economy. The total net inflow of people to a state matters because it affects the overall supply of workers in the state. Economists predict that growth in the national labor force will slow in...

Information about the national economy is typically available well before information about the regional economy. For example, national employment data are usually released about a month before data for individual states, and the state data are often revised subsequently, resulting in a lag of...

The population of the Tenth Federal Reserve District has become increasingly diverse in recent decades. Since 1970, the share of ethnic and racial minorities in the district has nearly doubled, reaching 25 percent of the area's population in 2005. Minority job situations and earnings have long...

Manufacturing is a major force in the Tenth District economy, accounting for the largest share of output in the region and one of the largest shares of employment. Moreover, many manufacturing jobs are among the highest paying jobs in the district. Yet little information is available to track...

Newspapers in the Tenth Federal Reserve District generally keep a close eye on where their cities rank in national studies of high-tech activity. Readers have good reason to be interested in how “high tech” their communities are, despite the recent downturn in the sector. High-tech workers...

The banking industry has undergone substantial consolidation during the last 15 years, and that process has accelerated in the 1990s. One effect of this consolidation has been to greatly reduce the number of independent and locally owned banks. Some banks have been acquired by distant banking...

The Tenth District economy slowed down in 1998, with employment growing marginally below the national average. Despite very tight labor markets, employment growth remained healthy in many sectors. Construction; trade; transportation, communications, and public utilities; and finance, insurance, and...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City conducts a monthly survey of over 100 manufacturers across the Tenth District. Other Federal Reserve Banks conduct similar surveys of manufacturers within their districts, as do a number of regional associations of purchasing managers. ; The increased...