The FED Said Economic activity in the Southeast continued to grow modestly from early January through mid-February, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s latest Beige Book report on conditions in the six states of the Sixth Federal Reserve District, released on March 7 . Among the noteworthy items in the report are signals that […] Read more
Harvard Business Review With the flick of a switch, a handful of tech giants can change the nature and extent of mankind’s ingestion of information. In 2013, Google took a step towards understanding the intent of their users with the Hummingbird algorithm. Twitter replaced most-recent with most-important tweets when they introduced their algorithmic timeline in 2016. Facebook claimed […] Read more
The FED Said The recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 substantially reduced corporate taxes, from 35 percent to 21 percent. Some commentators and practitioners have voiced concerns about how the new tax law will affect demand for Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), America’s primary mechanism for producing new or refurbished affordable housing […] Read more
What the Data Says About Women in Management Between 1980 and 2010 Harvard Business Review Advancement toward gender equality at work has slowed since the 1990s for three major reasons: people’s attitudes stopped becoming more gender egalitarian, occupations stopped gender integrating, and the gender wage gap began decreasing at slower rates. Sociologist Paula England has called this phenomenon an […] Read more
PEW Research Center Nearly 34 million lawful immigrants live in the United States. Many live and work in the country after receiving lawful permanent residence (also known as a green card), while others receive temporary visas available to students and workers. In addition, roughly 1 million unauthorized immigrants have temporary permission to live and work in the U.S. through […] Read more
Harvard Business Review jennifer maravillas for hbr Software businesses are disrupting generations-old industries, from agriculture to entertainment. Programming wizards are amassing billion-dollar fortunes, and this may be just the beginning. Even average tech employees in their mid-twenties are raking in 6-figure paychecks. Unfortunately, a huge section of the workforce cannot capitalize on these opportunities. In […] Read more
The FED Said By many measures, the U.S. labor market is humming. The unemployment rate is the lowest since 2000. Nonfarm payroll employment has increased every month for more than seven years. Nevertheless, prosperity is bypassing large groups. For example, the percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in the labor force but living below the […] Read more
Harvard Business Review In 2016 John Stumpf, then the CEO of Wells Fargo, was called before Congress to explain a massive scandal. For more than four hours, Stumpf fielded a range of questions about why the bank, which had over $1.8 trillion in assets, had created 2 million false accounts, and, after the fraud was discovered, […] Read more
The FED Said In a recent post, we described the outlook for housing growth in the Atlanta Fed’s district as “slow and steady.” In this post, we look at what other Fed districts are hearing about housing growth and attempt to reconcile those anecdotes with recent signs from the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow. The most recent Beige Book characterized […] Read more
From Harvard Business Review The subject of sexual misconduct at work is dominating mainstream conversation and board room agendas. This doesn’t just mean men and women who run large global enterprises, Fortune 500 behemoths, film studios, and media platforms. The conversation is happening in small businesses as well. In the U.S. 43% of employees work in organizations with 50 […] Read more
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Summary of Economic Activity Sixth District business contacts remained largely positive with most noting that economic conditions were improving at a modest pace over the reporting period. Most contacts expect continued slow and steady growth in the near-term. Business contacts experienced on-going labor market tightness but limited wage growth. Non-labor […] Read more
The FED Said In 2017, the unemployment rate averaged 4.4 percent. That’s quite low on a historical basis. In fact, it’s the lowest level since 2000, when unemployment averaged 4.0 percent. But does that mean that the labor market is only 0.4 percentage points away from being as strong as it was in 2000? Probably […] Read more
Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his platform needs to change. Community feedback has shown that public content has been “crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other,” according to Zuckerberg. As a result, the company says it will be focusing more on promoting posts from friends rather than from […] Read more
The FED Said During six weeks of the holiday season, Geodis Contract Logistics of Brentwood, Tennessee, fulfilled about a million electronic commerce orders a day. From its 130-plus warehouses, the firm aims to ship every ecommerce order as quickly as possible, said Scott McWilliams, Geodis’s executive vice president of strategic development and a former member […] Read more
Harvard Business Review The vast majority of humans throughout history worked because they had to. Many found comfort, value, and meaning in their efforts, but some defined work as a necessity to be avoided if possible. For centuries, elites in societies from Europe to Asia aspired to absolution from gainful employment. Aristotle defined a “man […] Read more