Search Results
Journal Article
District Digest: Preparing to Work: The Demand for Postsecondary Education and How It's Changing
Starting around a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, and more acutely during the pandemic itself, postsecondary enrollment declined — most notably among community colleges, both in the Fifth District and in the United States as a whole. Yet the 2023-2024 academic year saw a shift in that trend as enrollment grew once again. What's going on?The unsatisfying answer is that there are conflicting forces at work, and it's hard to tell which will prevail. But one thing is clear: Combined with the anticipated decline in the college-age population, high costs of four-year degrees, and changing ...
Journal Article
Employment Barriers in the Rural Fifth District
In Virginia, 75 percent of working-age adults are employed, in line with the national average of 74 percent. But there are significant disparities across geographies. In Loudoun County, Va., in the Washington, D.C., metro area, the share is 84.1 percent. On the other side of the state, in Lee County, just 48.2 percent of working-age adults are employed. This is true of many socioeconomic indicators: Aggregation is necessary to understand broad outcomes, but with aggregation, we lose important geographic distinctions and, thus, the opportunity to identify both challenges and solutions. This is ...
Discussion Paper
Is Rental Assistance Getting to Those in Need?
Discussion Paper
After the Eviction Moratorium: How Are Renters Faring?
An estimated 2.7 million U.S. households received an eviction filing in 2018. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, a wave of federal, state, and local regulations halted the eviction process as renters coped with employment disruption and income loss. The federal eviction moratorium ended in August 2021, which raises the question: How have renters in the Fifth District been faring over the past year? Evidence suggests that evictions are increasing back to pre-pandemic levels but are not surging higher as some had feared. This post examines how renters in the Fifth District are faring ...
Discussion Paper
What Might Cuts to the Federal Government Workforce Mean for the Fifth District?
Federal government employment spans the country, but there is a concentration in the District of Columbia and spread through the surrounding counties in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Historically, the federal government presence has both insulated the region from the effects of economic downturns and also created additional challenges in the case of sequestration in 2013 or during short-lived government shutdowns.Understanding the economy of the Fifth District, therefore, requires sizing and preparing for any adverse economic impact of cuts in federal government employment and ...
Discussion Paper
The Federal Reserve’s COVID-19 Community Impact Survey
The Federal Reserve developed and fielded a survey of community-based organizations to better understand the impacts of COVID-19 on their operations and the communities they serve. Fifth District respondents in April and June expressed that while organizations and communities are experiencing significant disruptions, effects are expected to be longer-lasting for the latter.
Journal Article
District Digest: Understanding SNAP's Role
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a key component of the United States' social safety net and supports millions of Americans annually by providing food vouchers for households with low income and assets. SNAP supports households enduring persistent poverty as well as those temporarily in economic distress, as its enrollment expands during recessions to accommodate the unemployed. Economists Robert Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University and James Ziliak of the University of Kentucky have explained that SNAP operates like an automatic stabilizer — that is, a counterweight ...
Discussion Paper
What Might Cuts in Federal Government Spending Mean for the Fifth District?
In a previous post, we examined the concentration of the federal government workforce in the Fifth Federal Reserve District — a region that includes the government-concentrated District of Columbia and surrounding areas in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. However, workforce concentration is just one aspect of federal government spending in our district. Virginia and Maryland, for example, have consistently been among the top recipients of federal contract dollars. To understand the extent to which the Fifth District relies on the federal government requires examining not only the ...
Discussion Paper
Spotlight on Rural Best Practices: Lessons From the 2023 IRA Poster Session
Throughout our region, small towns and rural communities are continually working to improve outcomes for their residents. And we can learn a lot from how different communities, and the organizations within them, are gaining positive traction. What are their ingredients for success?While the mix of ingredients differs from one community to the next, a top five list has emerged from the Richmond Fed's engagement with rural communities over the past several years: 1) regional collaboration; 2) strong local leadership; 3) telling a compelling story; 4) playing to strengths; and 5) taking a ...
Journal Article
District Digest: Community Colleges: Beyond the Numbers
There is enduring demand for postsecondary education that can provide the diverse range of skills, knowledge, and experience required for the jobs of today. For some postsecondary institutions, traditional metrics designed around the four-year degree model (i.e., graduation rates for first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students) are reasonable measures of how successfully they provide that training. For other institutions, such as community colleges, metrics like the Richmond Fed's Survey of Community College Outcomes are designed to more accurately measure what they do and who they serve. ...