Search Results
Journal Article
Understanding the Motivations for Business Participation in Voluntary Web-Based Business Surveys
As survey response rates decline nationwide, Federal Reserve Banks face challenges to engaging business survey panelists to collect some of the economic data that helps inform monetary policy. This Economic Commentary examines what motivates businesses to participate in some of the survey panels run by the regional groups at the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and Richmond. Based on 312 survey responses, our results show that while helping the Fed is the primary motivation across all segments, participation drivers vary by firm size, recruitment method, and panel tenure. These findings ...
Briefing
How Much Financial Help Do People Give and Receive? Evidence from the Understanding America Survey
The Understanding America Study has added a module recording the transfers that respondents have given to and/or received from their family and friends.The module includes information on financial transfers of wealth, along with in-kind transfers of services such as room and board or caregiving, and these variables can be linked to the broader UAS dataset.In this article, we describe and summarize the variables in the new module. The data indicate that transfers are widespread, usually small but sometimes substantial, and most commonly from parents to adult children.
Discussion Paper
Student Parents: The Power of Wraparound Supports
Many community college students juggle work and family responsibilities alongside their academic pursuits. Wraparound services — such as transportation assistance, child care, mental health counseling and housing — help students meet their non-academic needs, which improves colleges' retention and completion rates. These services also attract adult learners, a key population of community college students.As we have written about previously, funding wraparound services is complicated. Community colleges rely heavily on local, state, and federal funding for their academic programs, but this ...
Discussion Paper
Fifth District Employment: Findings From the June Business Surveys
In our June business surveys1, we asked Fifth District firms how their ability to hire workers has changed since last year and what their expectations are for their workforces over the next six months. Firms reported little change in their ability to hire workers compared to this time last year. Moreover, firms that experienced changes in their ability to hire workers, for better or for worse, cited changes in the labor pool — both in size and skills available — as the driving factor. Over the next six months, most firms expect to hold headcount steady. However, the minority of firms ...
Discussion Paper
Assessing Manufacturing Business Conditions by Firm Size
Fifth District manufacturing activity, as measured by the Richmond Fed manufacturing composite index, has been sluggish over the past few years. To better understand these dynamics, we look at firms' reported performance by size. Specifically, we looked at the diffusion indexes for several metrics. Diffusion indexes are often used to understand if economic activity is improving, declining, or is unchanged. For example, with employee headcount, a positive value means that more firms reported increasing headcount, while a negative value indicates that more firms reported decreasing headcount.We ...
Discussion Paper
Firms and Artificial Intelligence: A Regional Update
Similar to past technological developments, the productivity implications, labor market implications, and thus economic implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will evolve over time. A lot depends on who is using AI tools, when they are using them, and how they are using them.In the Richmond Fed's December business surveys — which were fielded between Dec. 1 and Dec. 17 — we asked firms if they have adopted AI and if so, how they were using it. Businesses reported that they were increasingly providing employees with access to AI tools to complete tasks but were less likely to have ...
Discussion Paper
Regional Firms Report Wage Growth Returns to Normal Levels
In mid-2021, regional businesses who responded to the Richmond Fed business surveys started to report accelerated wage growth. This wage growth coincided with increasing labor demand and challenges of finding workers with the right skills. In February 2024, we reported that wage growth was returning to normal levels, but it was still greater than prepandemic levels. To better understand if wage growth has returned to more typical levels, we not only analyzed our standard questions on realized and expected wage growth but also added a question in June 2021 to gauge how far firms are from what ...
Discussion Paper
Pricing Strategies of Regional Firms: Results From Our September 2026 Survey
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, persistent unpredictability of input cost has pushed many firms to rethink how they price. In the last six years, the global pandemic, supply chain shortages, labor shortages, tariffs, and geopolitical conflicts have put upward pressure on the costs firms are facing. In some cases, the combination of steady demand and technological improvement has allowed firms to increase the prices they charge their customers with less resistance — a phenomenon most obvious during the high inflation of 2021 and 2022. More recently, we found that customer resistance and fear of ...
Discussion Paper
Regional Businesses Returning to Pre-COVID-19 Operations