The FED Said Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Summary of Economic Activity Sixth District business contacts indicated that economic conditions continued to improve modestly from the previous report. The majority of contacts were relatively optimistic with expectations for continued modest growth over the next three to six months. The labor market remained tight and overall […] Read more

The FED Said In a recent macroblog post, we shared some results of a joint national survey that is an ongoing collaboration between the Atlanta Fed, Nick Bloom of Stanford University, and Steve Davis of the University of Chicago, and Jose Barrero of Stanford University. (By the way, we’re planning on calling this work the “Survey […] Read more

Harvard Business Review Over the past few decades, Silicon Valley has been such a powerful engine for entrepreneurship in technology that, all too often, it is considered to be some kind of panacea. Corporate executives seek to inject “Silicon Valley DNA” into their cultures, and policy makers point to venture-funded entrepreneurship as a solution for […] Read more

The FED Said “Location, location, location” is a truism associated with residential real estate. What we’re hearing from our construction contacts could be another sort of truism: “Labor, lumber, lots.” They are referring to the ongoing tight labor market in the construction trades, the skyrocketing price of lumber, and the difficulty of obtaining lots on […] Read more

Harvard Business review Passenger electric cars get all the press, especially when someone launches one into space. But something important is going on in the world of commercial vehicles as well. Last year Tesla announced it would produce an electric long-haul big rig. PepsiCo, Walmart, and UPS promptly committed to buying a few hundred. More recently, UPS made an important announcement about its plans […] Read more

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