The CFO Survey offers insights from business leaders on the financial outlook for their firms, the challenges they face, and their expectations for the economy. The survey is conducted quarterly in partnership with Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Data & Analysis: National Economy
National Analysis
Our staff economists regularly monitor the national economy, helping the Richmond Fed grasp current conditions and their implications for monetary policy.
These charts and tables contain the latest economic data gathered by the Richmond Fed's Research Department. This information is updated weekly.
This weekly blog explores the numbers behind the headlines on the national economy.
The natural rate of interest is a hypothetical interest rate that is consistent with economic and price stability. There are various estimates of the natural rate in the economics literature, each making certain assumptions about economic interactions. Using a method developed by two Richmond Fed economists, the natural rate is estimated quarterly.
The Non-Employment Index is an alternative to the standard unemployment rate that includes all non-employed individuals and accounts for persistent differences in their labor market attachment.
The Scavette-O'Trakoun-Sahm-style (SOS) indicator is a new U.S. recession indicator using the weekly insured unemployment rate with the methodology of the Sahm Recession Indicator (2019).
The scatterplot of monthly inflation and the share of relative price increases provides a simple benchmark for assessing whether monthly inflation is behaving in a manner consistent with the 25 years before the pandemic.
The Partisan Conflict Index tracks the degree of political disagreement among U.S. federal lawmakers.