The economy continues to expand at a moderate pace. Ongoing federal deficit reduction will weigh on the recovery in the near term, but we expect growth to pick up next year as monetary policy remains accommodative and the forces restraining recovery ease somewhat. — John Fernald » Read more in FedViews • May 9 Will Labor Force Participation Bounce Back? • FRBSF Economic Letter 2013-14 The most recent U.S. recession and recovery have been accompanied by a sharp decline in the labor force participation rate. The largest declines have occurred in states with the largest job losses. This suggests that some of the recent drop in the national labor force participation rate could be cyclical. Past recoveries show evidence of a similar cyclical relationship between changes in employment and participation, which could portend a moderation or reversal of the
participation decline as the current recovery continues. Bengali • Daly • Valletta • May 13, 2013 District Trends Beige Book • April 17, 2013 Economic activity in the District expanded at a modest pace. Demand for both homes and commercial real estate properties continued to expand on balance. » Summary • 12th District • Full report 12L Economic Trends • May 2013 (pdf, 507kb) |
Improving Fed Transparency Opening the Temple: An Essay by President and CEO John C. Williams Recent FOMC Communications Initiatives 
On January 25, the FOMC took two important steps to improve transparency about monetary policy in the U.S. First, the FOMC provided a statement that outlines its longer-run goals and monetary policy strategy. Second, the FOMC provided guidance about its expectations for future monetary policy in the form of quantitative projections of the federal funds rate. New in Research In the News Fed Discovers that, Yes, QE Impacts the Dollar • by Steve Goldstein, Marketwatch Blog, Wall Street Journal • April 1, 2013 This just in — the dollar reacts to Federal Reserve pronouncements. That’s according to a just published note from the San Francisco Fed. Researchers Reuven Glick and Sylvain Leduc plotted the relationship between quantitative easing policy surprises and the trade-weighted value of the U.S. dollar. They found that the greater the surprise, the more the dollar depreciates. » Read more in "Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Dollar" • Glick • Leduc Five Ways to Reform Social Security Disability Insurance • by Dylan Matthews, Wonkblog, The Washington Post • March 29, 2013 Chana Joffe-Walt's NPR segment on disability insurance has provoked considerable debate as to the program's health and how, if at all, it needs to be changed. So what reform proposals are on the table? In their book, The Declining Work and Welfare of People with Disabilities, Mary Daly and Richard Burkhauser would give employers with low rates of disability insurance use a tax break, and increase taxes on employers who send a lot of workers onto disability. » Read more in "Evaluating Growth in the Supplemental Security Income Program for Disabled Children" • Burkhauser • Daly • Lucking Is China Cooking Its Books? • by Charles Riley, CNN Money • March 26, 2013 Are China's economic statistics accurate? Pose this question to a group of China watchers and you're likely to receive a variety of responses. Now we have an opinion from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Their verdict? The statistics are pretty good. » Read more in "On the Reliability of Chinese Output Figures" • Fernald • Malkin • Spiegel Trends with Benefits • by Chana Joffe-Walt, This American Life, National Public Radio • March 22, 2013 The number of Americans receiving federal disability payments has nearly doubled over the last 15 years. There are towns and counties around the nation where almost 1/4 of adults are on disability. Planet Money's Chana Joffe-Walt spent 6 months exploring the disability program, including an interview with Mary Daly. » Read more in "Explaining the Rapid Growth in Social Security Disability Insurance Rolls" • Daly • Lucking • Schwabish Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Lengthen Unemployment Spells? Evidence from Recent Cycles in the U.S. Labor Market • Working paper 2013-09 We study unemployment insurance benefit extensions across states to estimate their overall impact following the Great Recession compared with the extension during the much milder downturn in the early 2000s. We find a small but significant reduction in the unemployment exit rate and a small increase in the expected duration of unemployment arising from both sets of UI extensions, primarily due to a reduction in labor force exits rather than the job finding rate. Farber • Valletta • April 2013 Upcoming Seminars TBA
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