Regional Matters

College degree attainment is associated with higher labor force participation, and although better data is needed to understand fully, this seems to also be true for those who have some college but no degree.

Recent Immigration into the Fifth District has broadly aided population growth, but especially in states adjoining the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia).

Firms continue to innovate and automate, although responses from Fifth District business respondents illustrate that we are in the early days of AI adoption.

This post explores how changes in total population, out-of-the-labor-force population, and unemployment explain employment growth across the Fifth District's rural counties.

Results from the Richmond Fed's May monthly business surveys indicate that for now, firms report employment gains that are driven by increased hiring more than declining separations.

Historically, most higher education state and local spending has gone to four-year institutions. As community colleges play an increasing role in training workers for high-demand jobs, have funding patterns kept up?

Fifth District firms expect a limited impact to their businesses due to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, although the impact varies across industries.

Over half of the rural counties that experienced population growth between 2020 and 2023 did so after seeing population declines in the prior decade, and that growth came largely from domestic migration.

Following the release of the 2023 Rural-Urban Continuum Codes, many counties in the Fifth District have become more rural. What caused these changes, and how does this affect the way we think about rural?

We reexamine the Dallas Fed's analysis to understand if regional manufacturing data published by several Reserve Banks still track leading national economic indicators.