District/State Economic Conditions: District economic overview and State economic conditions

Economic indicators ; Economic conditions ; Federal Reserve District, 5th

Texas economy shakes off rough ride in 2009

While conditions remain weak, it appears that the Texas economy is on a steadier course after a rough ride last year. Recent economic data and anecdotal evidence suggest the worst of the state's economic woes may be over. Activity is growing in several sectors. The state maintains its traditional advantages--relatively low living costs, modest taxes, a central location and an attractive business climate. Barring further setbacks, the Texas economy should pick up steam in 2010 and beyond.Economic conditions - Texas ; Global financial crisis ; Recessions ; Economic indicators

Hiring, job loss, and the severity of recessions

The hiring and firing decisions of individual businesses are one of the drivers behind movements in the unemployment rate during expansions and recessions. Whether a recession is driven by large job losses or weak hiring will greatly affect the composition and consequences of the unemployed and can have important policy implications. The extent to which recessions are times of weak hiring or high job loss depends in large part on the severity of the downturn. A recession is a time when the fraction of businesses that are expanding goes down and the fraction of businesses that are contracting goes up. A severe recession is one in which the shift in this distribution is more dramatic. In "Hiring, Job Loss, and the Severity of Recessions," Jason Faberman discusses how the severity of a recession determines whether high job loss or weak hiring will be the more important source of declining employment and rising unemployment through disproportionate changes in the distribution of business-level employment growth.Recessions ; Unemployment

1997 job outlook: the New York-New Jersey region

Major industrial and government restructurings have dominated employment reports in the New York-New Jersey region, leading to widespread pessimism about the region's job prospects. Nevertheless, for the past several years, the two states have managed to achieve modest job gains. In 1997, employment growth in New York and New Jersey will accelerate slightly as the pace of restructurings slows.Employment (Economic theory) ; New York (State) ; New Jersey ; Federal Reserve District, 2nd

Sustainable typography

We need to radically re-think typography for text-rich business documents & publications (not referring to books). Most designers assume people have time to read. In reality the following occurs: Observations: 1) We browse/forage (71%) then read (11%) 2) People have different time tolerances and requirements for detail i.e. the same information is required to different levels of detailing dependent on the time the reader can allocate to it (Senior directors will have less time than juniors). 3) People want choice as to whether they wish to view information on paper, i-phone, PowerPoint or via web/screen. 4) Most publications do not follow the cognitive principles of how we are Œwired‚ to interpret visual signals. Message-based Design & Message-based Writing (MBD/MBW) is a system that addresses these 4 points and allows key messages to be understood prior to reading simply by scanning the page with its embedded Œvisual hooks‚ to draw the reader in. Thus it overcomes Œfilter failure‚ a phrase coined and first used by Clay Shirky at the Web 2.0 Expo. It collapses to a summary and exploits the way we are wired. Additionally it caters for up to 4 time tolerances of readers and morphs‚ from paper to screen effortlessly

Job Creation, Worker Churning, and Wages at Young Businesses

Prior research has established the important role of startups and fast-growing young businesses in job creation and employment growth in the U.S. economy (Haltiwanger, Jarmin, and Miranda, (2010)). New firms and young businesses account for about 70 percent of gross job creation and disproportionately contribute to net job creation. The experimentation and dynamism of startups and young businesses also contribute to productivity growth (see, e.g., Haltiwanger (2012)). While the contribution to job creation and productivity is increasingly well understood, relatively little is known about the characteristics of the jobs generated by startups and young businesses. We use newly released data from the QWI using the firm size and firm age measures developed from the Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) to shed light on characteristics of jobs at young businesses. We focus on three key characteristics of jobs -- job creation, the churning of workers, and earnings per worker

Business Investment and Employment Tax Incentives to Stimulate the Economy

[Excerpt] According to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the U.S. economy has been in recession since December 2007. Congress passed and the President signed an economic stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5), in February 2009. The $787 billion package included$286 billion in tax cuts to help stimulate the economy. Among the tax reductions, many were tax incentives directed to business. The preliminary estimate of third quarter real gross domestic product (GDP) growth is 2.8%; the unemployment rate, a lagging indicator, averaged 9.6% in the third quarter and 10.0% in the fourth quarter of 2009. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke expects the economy to continue growing at a modest pace, but predicts that bank lending will remain constrained and the job market will remain weak into at least 2010. To further assist unemployed workers, help business, and stimulate housing markets, Congress passed the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-92). The Obama Administration has advocated further business tax incentives to spur investment and employment, especially for small business. The two most common measures to provide business tax incentives for new investment are investment tax credits and accelerated deductions for depreciation. The evidence, however, suggests that a business tax subsidy may not necessarily be the best choice for fiscal stimulus, largely because of the uncertainty of its success in stimulating aggregate demand. If such subsidies are used, however, the most effective short-run policy is probably a temporary investment subsidy. Permanent investment subsidies may distort the allocation of investment in the long run. Employment and wage subsidies are designed to increase employment directly by reducing a firm’s wage bill. The tax system is a frequently used means for providing employment subsidies. Most of the business tax incentives for hiring currently under discussion are modeled partially on the New Jobs Tax Credit (NJTC) from 1977 and 1978. Evidence provided in various studies suggests that incremental tax credits have the potential of increasing employment, but in practice may not be as effective in increasing employment as desired. There are several reasons why this may be the case. First, jobs tax credits are often complex and many employers, especially small businesses, may not want to incur the necessary record-keeping costs. Second, since eligibility for the tax credit is determined when the firm files the annual tax return, firms do not know if they are eligible for the credit at the time hiring decisions are made. Third, many firms may not even be aware of the availability of the tax credit until it is time to file a tax return. Lastly, product demand appears to be the primary determinant of hiring

District economic overview / State economic conditions

Federal Reserve District, 5th ; Economic indicators ; Economic conditions

The Taylor Principle and (In-) Determinacy in a New Keynesian Model with hiring Frictions and Skill Loss

We introduce duration dependent skill decay among the unemployed into a New-Keynesian model with hiring frictions developed by Blanchard/Gali (2008). If the central bank responds only to (current, lagged or expected future) inflation and quar¬terly skill decay is above a threshold level, determinacy requires a coefficient on infla¬tion smaller than one. The threshold level is plausible with little steady-state hiring and firing ("Continental European Calibration") but implausibly high in the oppo¬site case ("American calibration"). Neither interest rate smoothing nor responding to the output gap helps to restore determinacy if skill decay exceeds the threshold level. However, a modest response to unemployment guarantees determinacy. Moreover, under indeterminacy, both an adverse sunspot shock and an adverse technology shock increase unemployment extremely persistently.monetary policy rules, Taylor principle, NAIRU, unemployment, hysteresis.

Is Russia restructuring ? new evidence on job creation and destruction

The authors explorethe labor dynamics of Russian enterprise restructuring, empirically assessing how patterns of job creation and destruction are related to various aspects of enterprise restructuring across firms in different sectors and regions, and to different forms, sizes, vintages, and performance characteristics of ownership. Evidence from case studies - based on more than 50 site visits in 2000 - suggests that jobs have been destroyed, but only to a limited degree in some sectors and regions, largely because of institutional and incentive constraints and a still-widespread"socialist"corporate culture. Jobs have been created - particularly in sectors where devaluation had the most pronounced effect on important substitution and export promotion - but only slowly, mostly for lack of skilled workers and because regional mobility is limited. Labor turnover appears higher within regions than across regions. Newly available data for 1996 - 99 (provided by Goskomstat) for about 128,000 enterprises in 24 industrial sectors in Russia's 89 regions indicates that the typical firm has experienced only modest downsizing - about 12 percent - in number of employees. Smaller firms have entered, and larger, mature businesses have exited some sectors. Except for a lull in 1998, the rate of job creation has steadily increased and the rate of job destruction has declined, dropping substantially in 1998 - 99."Voluntary"worker separations remain the main - and growing - form of layoff, and the proportion of layoffs through redundancies is shrinking (now about 4 percent of total separations). Firm size and net employment growth are not statistically related, but form of ownership seems to matter. Firm size is also statistically correlated (positively) with profitability, but restructuring through changes in net employment growth appears not to be. It seems Russian restructuring needs to become more efficient.Labor Management and Relations,Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Labor Standards,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Management and Relations,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management