Viewpoints

State data show continued brisk job growth in May. The sum of the seasonally adjusted gains in payroll employment across the states came to 269,300—quite comparable to the national increase of 223,000. However, most states did not [...]

On June 8 BLS released the data on March Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC). This dataset offers a different perspective on labor costs than the ECI. Like the ECI, the numbers come from both private and state and local [...]

The famous American economist Mr. Herbert Stein stated, “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.” Yet, when it comes to asset price cycles it has been hard to pinpoint when the music stops playing as it has been very difficult [...]

The minutes of the May 1 and 2 Federal Open Market Committee meeting noted “several participants thought that it would be important to continue to monitor the slope of the yield curve, emphasizing the historical regularity that an [...]

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve has released updated estimates of coincident indexes by state. The coincident indexes are computed from a dynamic factor model relating a number of other monthly variables (primarily from the labor [...]

Recently both the US and China announced policy changes or campaigns with 2025 as a target date. Although the date was similar, the substance of each was not, illustrating why the US continually runs trade deficits and China trade [...]

The April job numbers across the states were consistent with the national figures, and show some continuing moderation in the pace of job growth. BLS reports that only three states had statistically significant growth in jobs (Texas, [...]

BEA has released its estimates of 2016 real personal incomes for states and metro areas. These estimates are derived by computing personal consumption price deflators for those locations (data on regional CPIs are used in this [...]