Businesses with no employees other than the owner often turned to personal funds in response to financial challenges during the pandemic. These nonemployers were less likely than employer firms to seek pandemic-related emergency funding and less likely to be approved.

Manufacturing activity in the region continued to grow, according to the firms responding to the August Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey. The survey’s current indicators for general activity and shipments declined from July’s readings but remained elevated, while the new orders indicator rose. Additionally, employment increases were more widespread this month, and both price indexes remained elevated. Most future indexes moderated this month but continue to indicate that the firms expect growth over the next six months.

The 2021 ROC Cohort program focuses on equitable small business recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of racial equity. Over 10 months, nine cohorts spanning communities across the U.S. will engage in equity-focused training and peer-to-peer learning and receive personalized support in developing their local small business recovery plans. The program will help them to explore structural racism impacting small businesses owned by people of color in their community and plan for a more equitable recovery. This year’s partners include the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Minneapolis, Richmond, and San Francisco.

Let’s Get America Back to Work! Let’s #InvestInWork.

For the nation to achieve a strong jobs recovery, we need to work together to address the many issues and questions surrounding access and equity in the workforce.

Millions of job seekers are still facing challenges preventing them from actively participating in the workforce, while millions more are facing barriers that are keeping them from seeking and getting better-paying jobs that provide family-sustaining wages.

On September 1, WorkingNation, the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Kansas City, and Fed Communities are coming together to host the #InvestInWork Twitter chat to discuss these issues and surface solutions to these challenges.

We want to know:

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17 Aug ’21

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Consumer Finance institute (CFI) held a virtual symposium on May 12, 2021, on the topic of financial health and stability of higher education institutions.

Imagine a future where racial and gender labor market disparities don’t exist. How much would each state economy stand to gain? That’s the question behind this simulation. While we can’t predict the future, we can look to the past for clues.

For this thought experiment, we crunched the numbers for 15 years of data spanning 2005-2019. For every US state and Washington DC, we modeled how much gross domestic product (GDP) would have increased each year by eliminating racial and gender gaps in earnings, hours worked, educational attainment, and employment.

This simulation adapts methodology from a recent Federal Reserve working paper, which estimates that these gaps cost $2.6 trillion of foregone GDP nationally in 2019. Simulated GDP in our scenario assumes that every group has at least the same average labor-related measures as a comparison group that has historically faced the fewest systemic barriers in the labor market; for example, closing...

September 9, 2021 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET | 1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. CT Virtual video event presented by all 12 District Banks of the Federal Reserve System

Businesses with no employees other than the owner often turned to personal funds in response to financial challenges during the pandemic. These nonemployers were less likely than employer firms to seek pandemic-related emergency funding and less likely to be approved.

30 Jul ’21

The COVID-19 pandemic caused renters across the U.S. to fall behind on their monthly housing payments. Review updated monthly estimates and a state-by-state breakdown of data related to this topic.