We estimate trend unemployment rates for Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia, states that span parts of the Fourth District of the Federal Reserve System. Our estimated unemployment rate trend for the District as a whole stood at 5.7 percent in 2020:Q1 compared to a 4.7 percent...

This paper presents a flow-based methodology for real-time unemployment rate projections and shows that this approach performed considerably better at the onset of the COVID-19 recession in the spring 2020 in predicting the peak unemployment rate as well as its rapid decline over the year. It...

Lenders have traditionally used credit reports to measure a borrower’s default risk, but credit agencies also market reports to employers for use in hiring. Since the onset of the Great Recession, eleven state legislatures have restricted the use of credit reports in the labor market. We...