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Data Updates: Measuring Evictions during the COVID-19 Crisis

Since our July report, eviction policies related to COVID-19 continue to evolve. Our updates capture weekly eviction filing counts for 63 jurisdictions across the United States—that’s approximately 13 percent of renter households in the country. Read More  

Smallest Firms Reveal Barriers to Economic Inclusion: Lessons from Pandemic Support Programs

Data from the Small Business Credit Survey and insights from community-based organizations prove to be invaluable tools for helping small businesses access the credit they need. Read More  

Manufacturing Wage Premiums Have Diverged between Production and Nonproduction Workers

Manufacturing jobs have long been associated with good wages. While some manufacturing workers still enjoy relatively high wages, the premium for workers on the factory floor has shrunk dramatically. Why? And what does it mean for workforce policy? Read More  

Migration as a Vector of Economic Losses from Disaster-Affected Areas in the United States

In this paper, we infuse consideration of migration into research on economic losses from extreme weather disasters. Taking a comparative case study approach and using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, we document the size of economic losses via migration from 23 disaster-affected areas in the United States after the most damaging hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires on record. We then employ demographic standardization and decomposition to determine if these losses primarily reflect changes in out-migration or changes in the economic resources that migrants take with them (greater economic losses per migrant). Finally, we consider the implications of these losses for changing spatial inequality in the United States. While disaster-affected areas and those living in them differ in their experiences of and responses to extreme weather disasters, we generally find that, relative to the year before an extreme weather disaster, economic losses via migration from disaster-affected areas increase the year of and after the disaster, that these changes primarily reflect changes in out-migration (vs. the economic resources that migrants take with them), and that these losses briefly disrupt the status quo by temporarily reducing spatial inequality. Read More  

Does Spending Slide When COVID-19 Surges?

Driven by the delta variant, the latest COVID-19 surge is the largest and most widespread since that of November and December 2020. How do consumer spending and social distancing habits during the delta surge compare to those of last fall’s surge? Read More