An overview of national and regional economic conditions, plus and an overview of River Ridge Commerce Center
Last updated: 03-29-2021
Overall the Survey finds that firms continue to report declines in demand, while overall employment has increased. This suggests the rate of businesses reopening may be faster than the rate of customers coming back to stores.
Last updated: 06-18-2020
More states are legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational use, and this movement has created a patchwork of laws and policies on how the drug is treated.
Last updated: 05-18-2020
Economic conditions have weakened moderately since the previous report. Around half of firms are closed temporarily. Among the firms that are closed, about one-third expect to reopen in the next 3 weeks. Banks indicated a sharp increase in delinquencies, primarily in mortgages, credit cards, and auto loans, but expect fewer delinquencies in the third quarter.
Last updated: 05-27-2020
Despite their small size, startups have traditionally been a key source of jobs. Has their role changed in recent years?
Last updated: 03-18-2020
What have COVID-19 trends in cases and deaths looked like in the largest MSAs in the District?
Last updated: 05-07-2020
Providing more generous unemployment insurance benefits to laid-off and furloughed workers can be an efficient, targeted means to help offset their loss of income.
Last updated: 03-28-2020
The U.S. outlook provides a solid baseline forecast for Memphis, with likely slower growth in the region, in part due to industry mix.
Last updated: 01-15-2020
The business cycles of individual U.S. states can diverge from the national cycle. Industry mix within those states can help explain why this may happen. Understanding how differences in industry composition affect regional business cycles may help local leaders better tailor their policies to downturns and expansions.
Last updated: 01-03-2020
The St. Louis Fed’s Center for Household Financial Stability took an in-depth look at four Eighth District cities (St. Louis, Little Rock, Ark., Louisville, Ky., and Memphis, Tenn.) to explore how dynamics are shifting.
Last updated: 01-03-2020
Inflation-adjusted debt levels in the U.S. and Eighth District nearly returned to their Great Recession peaks over the first half of 2019. Student debt generally grew faster than any other debt category. Among the District’s four largest metro areas, the delinquency rates of student loans and auto debt are historically high.
Last updated: 12-16-2019
The share of Americans who telecommute home has risen in recent decades and the share of telecommuting workers differs among cities. Surprisingly, a telecommuter drove more miles annually than the average worker who has to travel to a workplace.
Last updated: 10-10-2019
The St. Louis Fed released its economic conditions indexes through second quarter of 2019 for the 50 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the U.S.
Last updated: 10-10-2019
From 2013 to 2017, migration helped some metro areas in the Eighth District, but its overall effect on the population of the District states was relatively small. During that time, the educational attainment and income of people moving into the District states were slightly lower than those of people leaving.
Last updated: 09-23-2019
A look at racial and educational diversity in the Eighth Federal Reserve District.
Last updated: 07-19-2019
Concerns about student loan debt have grown as students incur greater burdens and take longer to repay this debt. In the Eighth District, tuition is a more important driver of student debt than non-tuition costs.
Last updated: 07-16-2019
Data suggest that rural areas have been growing more slowly because of greater exposure to the government sector and lower exposure to the private service-providing sector.
Last updated: 06-21-2019
The St. Louis MSA has grown at a rate less than half the rate forecasted by this model. This shortfall is not driven by unexpectedly slower net birth rates, but faster-than-expected migration out of the region.
Last updated: 06-07-2019
How might the current flood's effects on crop prices compare with the effects from the Great Flood of 1993?
Last updated: 06-06-2019
The U.S. housing market has rebounded from the Great Recession, though the lingering effects of the downturn can still be seen. Declining affordability, higher mortgage rates, higher construction costs and declines in equity prices slowed the U.S. and District housing markets in 2018.
Last updated: 04-12-2019
For the largest metro areas in the Eighth District, the growth rate of mortgage and auto debt picked up in the third quarter of 2018.
Last updated: 04-12-2019
With its March release of state and local employment data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provided a benchmark revision to monthly nonfarm payroll employment data released over the past 18 months.
Last updated: 03-18-2019
Economic conditions in local construction are not as dire as they might appear. As we have written about in previous articles, regional data are subject to substantial but predictable revisions.
Last updated: 12-28-2018
Debt growth slowed in both the U.S. and the Eighth District from the first quarter of 2018 to the second. Overall, the data do not seem to indicate that a severe debt problem may be brewing.
Last updated: 01-02-2019
Bourbon and other American whiskeys have become targets of retaliatory tariffs amid global trade disputes. Tourism related to whiskey has provided another way to tap growth from regional distilleries.
Last updated: 11-29-2018
Unemployment gives us a measure of labor supply in the economy. However, this is only one side of the labor market.
Last updated: 11-12-2018
U.S. and regional farmers face uncertainty after China, the world’s biggest importer of soybeans, imposed a tariff on U.S. soybean imports. While the result of the tariff is difficult to predict, economic models indicate a negative impact for both the U.S. and China.
Last updated: 09-10-2018
Strikes by teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, and Colorado have highlighted differences in teachers' wages across the country. Teachers in these states have lower-than-average annual wages but also lower-than-average cost of living (COL). Adjusting for differences in COL narrows the differences in teachers' wages across the country, but substantial differences remain.
Last updated: 09-07-2018
Automation is occurring more in service and manufacturing positions. It is one factor that contributes to the disappearance of middle-income, routine-task jobs in the U.S. Automation will have the greatest impact on smaller MSAs in the District due to a high concentration of employment in sales and production occupations.
Last updated: 08-13-2018
The latest survey shows the majority of agricultural bankers expect farm income to decline next quarter, just as it did in this second quarter report. Quality farmland values also fell in the most recent survey. There was a slight improvement in cash rents compared to a year ago.
Last updated: 08-13-2018
In real terms, debt isn’t at a new high. And the recent increase has been modest compared with the debt run-up before the Great Recession. Though the rate of serious delinquency is rising in both the U.S. and Eighth District, the increase doesn’t appear to be troublesome.
Last updated: 06-26-2018
An overview of national and regional economic conditions, plus a panel on international trade
Last updated: 06-20-2018
Bureau of Labor Statistics revises state and local employment data just once a year. The St. Louis Fed analyzes the data and reports on it four times a year. This extra reporting can take the surprise out of a once-a-year revision.
Last updated: 06-01-2018
The paycheck itself doesn’t provide a complete picture of one’s lifestyle since cost of living can vary geographically. Regional price parity indexes can measure differences in the cost of living across regions. The District’s cost of living is about 15 percent below the national average, though this level varies among its counties.
Last updated: 04-04-2018
House price growth is not an accurate predictor of regional inflation.
Last updated: 03-26-2018
Did You Know?
While the output share is relatively small, health care comprises about 22 percent of household spending, up from 10 percent in the 1970s.
The health care sector has generated about 30 percent of new jobs nationally since 2007 and 50 percent of new jobs in the Eighth District.
Not all jobs in health care have high wages. One-third of workers are in health care support occupations that pay below the average wage.
Last updated: 03-01-2018
The St. Louis Fed has updated its estimates of economic growth through the third quarter of 2017 for 68 of the U.S.’s most populous metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Average growth across these MSAs was 2.7 percent. Among the District MSAs, growth was fastest in Louisville at 4.3 percent, followed by Little Rock at 3.3 percent, Memphis at 2.2 percent, and St. Louis at 1.9 percent.
Last updated: 01-18-2018
Employment growth across the Eighth District appears to be weaker than currently reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), according to our latest estimates.
Last updated: 12-28-2017
Metro Area real income in the early 1970s influenced population growth.
Last updated: 12-20-2017
First-time homebuyers are essential to the dynamics of the housing market by allowing current homeowners to trade up. The number of first-time homebuyers decreased between 2000 and 2011 and then started slowly increasing again.
Last updated: 12-15-2017
As technological progress continues to alter the landscape of the economy, a subset of manufacturing industries known as “advanced manufacturing” serves as a critical source of growth as these products drive productivity gains throughout the economy.
Last updated: 12-15-2017
The St. Louis Fed hosted its annual Regional Economic Briefing in Memphis, Tennessee. This year's event featured a national economic outlook and focus on the role of startups, STEM jobs, and the technology sector in reshaping the regional economy.
Last updated: 10-23-2017
Despite slow economic growth recently, living standards are relatively high in the St. Louis metropolitan statistical area (MSA). For example, the St. Louis MSA ranks in the top 6 percent of MSAs based on real per capita personal income and in the top 16 percent based on real median household income.
Last updated: 10-05-2017
Many gauge the health of local labor markets based on the difference between the local and national unemployment rates. What is often overlooked is that these rates, statistically speaking, often could be the same.
Last updated: 09-28-2017
Rebecca Cowin and Charles Gascon found there is less wage inequality in the St. Louis MSA than in the nation.
Last updated: 09-26-2017
2016 real gross domestic product (GDP) data for the 382 metro areas in the United States was released last week. Real GDP increased in 14 of the 20 metro areas in the Eighth Federal Reserve District.
Last updated: 09-22-2017
The St. Louis Fed hosted our annual Regional Economic Briefing. This year's event was titled Challenges and Opportunities Facing the Manufacturing Sector: A National and Local Perspective.
Last updated: 09-07-2017
Millions of jobs have been created since the previous recession ended. From 2011 to 2014 alone, the U.S. economy added about 2.5 million jobs per year. Much of this job growth has come from the formation of new businesses (i.e., startups) and their initial growth. We look closely at how firms of different ages contributed to the net growth in jobs between 2011 and 2014—on the national level and within the four largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the Eighth District: St. Louis, Missouri; Little Rock, Arkansas; Louisville, Kentucky; and Memphis, Tennessee.
Last updated: 08-30-2017
Find out where to get the latest economic data on the Eighth District states and metro areas.
Last updated: 09-08-2017
The outlook for coal, which once was the dominant fuel for electricity generation, is waning. This article analyzes the coal industry both nationally and within our region (the states that make up the Eighth Federal Reserve District) and ponders its future as a source of both electricity and jobs.
Last updated: 08-30-2017
Charles Gascon and James D. Eubanks examined the impact of a citywide minimum wage and found that it would affect residents across the income spectrum and throughout the entire metropolitan area.
Regional price parities show higher costs and lower purchasing power on the coasts.
Current estimates indicate that employment in the state of Missouri grew at a brisk annualized rate of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 before slowing down during the first five months of 2017.
Over the past 25 years, the U.S. economy has undergone a profound technological revolution, characterized as a “palpable historic change” by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
In the past 30 years, we’ve seen the gender earnings gap narrow 17 percentage points. Do the trends indicate it will take another 30 years for the gap to shrink another 17 percentage points?
Of all major commercial real estate categories, the multifamily market has strengthened the most since the past recession. Is a bubble brewing? And how does the Eighth Federal Reserve District compare with the nation?
Nationally, nearly half of 25-year-olds lived with their parents in 2012-2013, up from just over a quarter in 1999. A recent article in The Regional Economist examined statistics and reviewed some of the literature on millennials moving back home.
U.S. real per capita auto debt continued to rise in the last three months of 2016, although at a slower pace. Meanwhile, consumers faced greater difficulties in repaying car loans, according to the latest issue of The Quarterly Debt Monitor.
Maximiliano Dvorkin and Hannah Shell examine the dynamics of job polarization in the Eighth District and compare them with national trends.
Why are St. Louis employment numbers revised every March?
See this quarter’s overview of housing market conditions in each of the seven states that comprise the Federal Reserve's Eighth District and the metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) of Little Rock, Louisville, Memphis, and St. Louis.
follow @stlouisfed