We take great pride in what we do — helping to protect the strength and stability of our economy. It's the cornerstone of our public service mission. We bring focus and passion to our work every day.

While unemployment increased across the US during the COVID-19 pandemic, some states experienced bigger jumps in joblessness than others. Can we explain these variances based on differences in the extent and duration of lockdowns and activity restrictions?

The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is excited to host the second annual Investing in Rural America Conference. This is a free conference and is ideal for policymakers, community representatives, businesses and foundations. This year's conference will be virtual and will convene experts on the economic and social aspects of growth in rural areas.

Attendees will spend the afternoon exploring the following topics in a rural context:

This virtual conference will provide undergraduate economics students with information on the range of career paths open to them and a forum to discuss the importance of having a variety of perspectives in the field of economics. Attendees will hear how economists' personal experiences and perspectives have influenced their paths and the projects they have chosen. Students will also have the opportunity to ask questions of economists who are currently working in different areas of the profession and to network with fellow students and recent college graduates who are working in the field of economics.

The event is being hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in partnership with Undergraduate Women in Economics and the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond.

The virtual conference is complimentary but registration is required due to the limited capacity for interactive sessions in Zoom. Once the capacity on Zoom is reached, there...

Research staff regularly monitors the national economy, helping the Richmond Fed grasp current conditions and their implications for monetary policy. Updated weekly, the following data is part of the information presented during policy discussions and meetings with our board of directors.

This virtual conference will provide undergraduate economics students with information on the range of career paths open to them and a forum to discuss the importance of having a variety of perspectives in the field of economics. Attendees will hear how economists' personal experiences and perspectives have influenced their paths and the projects they have chosen. Students will also have the opportunity to ask questions of economists who are currently working in different areas of the profession and to network with fellow students and recent college graduates who are working in the field of economics.

The event is being hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in partnership with Undergraduate Women in Economics and the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond.

The virtual conference is complimentary but registration is required due to the limited capacity for interactive sessions in Zoom. Once the capacity on Zoom is reached, there...

We discuss a statistical time series model to capture and forecast the dynamics of COVID-19 in the fifty U.S. states and Washington, D.C. We design the model to replicate the typical pattern of infections during a pandemic. We rely on Bayesian methods, which provide a straightforward way to quantify the uncertainty surrounding our estimates and forecasts. In this brief, we focus on North Carolina and Washington, D.C., since they have experienced different trajectories of COVID-19 and may have different implications for the efficacy of our approach.

Getting more women into the workforce is our best opportunity to grow the workforce, which could offset an aging population and declining birthrates.  While women’s labor force participation increased over the second half of the 20th century, it leveled off around 2000 and then began to decline. In recent years, the decline seemed to be reversing as the tightness of the labor market brought back women who’d been on the sidelines. But, women still faced barriers to labor force participation: a persistence of the gender wage gap, a disproportionate share of home and care responsibilities, and a lack of high-quality, affordable child care. The current crisis has brought this issues into sharp focus and we are already seeing negative effects on women’s participation in the workforce.   We are also at risk of losing child care businesses, which could put even more pressure on working families.  And the shift to virtual education could exacerbate the already large...