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What Can Geolocation Data Tell Us About Childcare Use and Accessibility?
In the U.S., many parents of young children may not have enough childcare providers near them, which may limit not only their childcare access but also their employment opportunities. In this article, we explore how data on people’s visiting patterns to childcare providers might help inform our understanding of the geographic distances between where families live and where providers operate, as well as how these distances and the capacity of providers can affect childcare access. Our research is part of the Chicago Fed’s Spotlight on Childcare and the Labor Market, a targeted effort to ...
Seventh District Midyear Review: Economic Growth Continued to Be Solid in the First Half of 2024
Overall, economic growth was steady during the first half of 2024 in both the nation and the Seventh Federal Reserve District.1 Real gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed some in both, but employment growth was up, especially in the District. Over the last few years, the District has almost always lagged the nation in both real GDP and employment growth, continuing a decade-long trend. Slower growth and slower inflation often go hand in hand, and recent data indicate inflation has indeed been somewhat lower in the Midwest.
What Region Looks Most Like the U.S. as a Whole?
The United States is a diverse country, whether you’re looking at its economic, population, or environmental (i.e., topographic and weather) characteristics. Some places are growing quickly; others, slowly. Some are home to large numbers of computer programmers; others, just a few ranchers. Some are hot and dry; others, cold and wet. The U.S. is also a large country, with regions that themselves are the size of some countries. While these regions all share in major U.S. trends like recessions and an aging population, some regions track national trends more closely than others.
Responding to the Childcare Needs of Shift Workers: Examples from the Automotive Industry
Building cars, trucks, SUVs, and automotive parts is not a nine-to-five job. Almost all automotive manufacturing plants run production on two or more shifts or crews per day, and it is not uncommon for auto workers to work second or third shifts, “swing” shifts (that rotate between day and night shifts), or to occasionally work overtime to meet production demands. If you’re an auto manufacturing worker and a parent, working these non-standard hours (defined as anything outside of regular Monday to Friday daytime hours) poses unique challenges in finding quality, available, and flexible ...
Seventh District Year in Review for 2024: Economic Growth Slowed to Near Average
In 2024, economic growth slowed for both the United States and the Seventh Federal Reserve District, with growth rates having come in close to their respective ten-year averages.1 District employment continued to grow more slowly than national employment overall, and this was partly due to slower growth rates for the District in the education and health services sector and the manufacturing sector. One bright spot for District employment was the public sector: Employment in the public sector grew faster than in the private sector, making up for several years of relatively slow job gains ...
Financial Positions of U.S. Public Corporations: Part 2, The Covid-19 Earnings Shock
This blog is the second in a series that discusses how the current pandemic affects the financial positions of publicly traded U.S. corporations, the potential implications of these financial developments, and the federal policy response. The first blog discussed the financial positions before the pandemic started. It documented that many nonfinancial publicly traded companies entered 2020 with historically elevated levels of leverage. This second blog explains how we use stock returns to project the potential earnings losses due to Covid-19; this will be used in our next blog to project the ...
Childcare Facility Financing: Perspectives from Three Decades of Supporting Childcare Centers
As part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Spotlight on Childcare and the Labor Market, this article focuses on the ways in which the lack of access to childcare is a barrier to employment in the Seventh District. We spoke with Joe Neri, CEO of IFF, a community development financial institution (CDFI) that has served the Midwest childcare sector for more than 30 years.
Charging Ahead: Trends in Leasing for Battery Electric Vehicles
How do consumers acquire vehicles that feature new propulsion technology? This question is of specific interest in the context of the growing sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), vehicles that run exclusively on electricity. In this post, we look at trends in leasing for BEVs during the past decade or so, a period in which the electric vehicle market has seen remarkable growth.
Strengthening Operational Resilience in the Cleared Ecosystem
In November 2023, a ransomware attack on a U.S. subsidiary of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China brought cyber risk into sharp relief for those who centrally clear financial transactions, especially on the heels of the cyber attack earlier that year on the Dublin-based ION financial trading services group.
A Closer Look at the Correlation Between Google Trends and Initial Unemployment Insurance Claims
Since the onset of the pandemic, there has been growing interest in tracking labor market activity with “big data” sources like Google Trends.1 Just as an example, one can track how the number of Google searches with the term unemployment office has changed over the past week for the Chicago metro area or explore how unemployment became one of the top searched issues across the U.S. during the early months of the pandemic here.