A summary of economic conditions in the Seventh District from the latest release of the Beige Book: “Economic activity in the Seventh District continued to expand slowly in June and early July. Contacts expressed heightened uncertainty about the economic outlook given recent weaker-than-expected demand as well as the ongoing fiscal issues in the U.S. and Europe.” ... Read More
The Seventh District states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin) experienced a faltering labor market in the second quarter of 2011, with little or no positive momentum going into the third quarter. According to estimates of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, monthly average employment growth slowed to 7,000 per month during the second quarter, from 53,000 per month duri... Read More
As central cities go in the Midwest, the city of Chicago is often held up as exceptionally successful, having experienced something of an economic renaissance since 1990. Much like other Midwest central cities, Chicago suffered acutely from population and manufacturing decline accompanied by sharp suburbanization during the 1970s and 1980s. The city's population declined 10.7 percent dur... Read More
Fame and fortune can be fleeting, but over the past year the Seventh District has been leading other U.S. regions in the pace of economic recovery. It is not so much that economic conditions are better here. Rather, it is that the pace of improvement has been quicker. As the map below illustrates, unemployment rates have fallen most rapidly in Michigan, followed by Illinois, and in quick ... Read More
The resumption of growth in the U.S. economy, beginning in mid-2009, has been welcome news. However, the pace of recovery has been disappointing, relative to the severity of the recession. Following a period in which U.S. output shrank 4.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2009, the economy did not regain its former size until the fourth quarter of 2010. The... Read More
How do regions adapt following economic calamities that displace large numbers of workers? In the best case scenario, they reinvent themselves. For example, economist Ed Glaeser documents the several times that Boston rose from the ashes following collapse of its shipping and old line manufacturing industries. In a similar vein, Detroit hopes to rebuild as an economy based on logistics, e... Read More
On March 31, 2011, the Chicago Fed will begin releasing on a monthly basis an index designed to measure growth in nonfarm business activity in the Seventh Federal Reserve District states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. This monthly index, called the Midwest Economy Index (MEI), will serve as a regional counterpart to the Chicago Fed's National Activity Index (CFNAI), ... Read More
As discussed regularly in this blog, manufacturing has long played an important role in the Midwest economy. One of our most prominent manufacturing sectors is agriculture, construction, and mining machinery. This industry's products are the large machines that plow fields and harvest crops, tear up and repave roads, dig mines and rescue miners. To define the sector specifically, we use t... Read More
This year the 2010 U.S. Census findings have started to become public. Thus far, these findings show that central cities of Midwest metropolitan areas, like Chicago and Detroit, experienced a rough decade. For example, the city of Chicago lost almost 7 percent of its population over the 2000s, although it had gained 4 percent during the 1990s. Indianapolis's population continued to grow ... Read More
David Oppedahl is the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's business economist who researches agriculture and rural economies. This past fall, he held a conference that explored the changing nexus between farming and rural growth and development in the Midwest. Farming activity itself directly generates a declining share of income in the Midwest, as it does in most other parts of the ... Read More
