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...

We analyze the restructuring of the manufacturing workforce over the past two decades by investigating how the occupational distribution of workers has changed. We identify important regional differences in the nature and degree of this restructuring, and give particular attention to New York...

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...

Over the past 30 years, the three states of the Third Federal Reserve District have lost more than one-third of their manufacturing jobs. And that job loss has accelerated over the past 15 years. Despite this, the region's manufacturing output has expanded over the same period, although much...

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...