Life is full of choices. For example, should we go to the concert or the baseball game?

This question is most likely decided by whoever has the greatest bargaining power in the household, and the FRED graph above provides some history on this decision over the past 65 years.

Expenditures for live entertainment are split into sports (in blue) and all the rest (in red). While the overall result is roughly 50-50, there’s some variation over time. In 1971, 73% of spending on live entertainment went to sports, while in recent years it’s been barely more than 40%. What changed?

Did the rise in cable TV and then the Internet change preferences? Did the household power structure change? Or is it because nowadays it’s easy to see concerts in baseball stadiums? This is one of the many examples of interesting data questions without a definitive answer.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “personal consumption expenditures admissions” and select the sports series. Click on “Edit Graph,” open the “Add Series” tab, search again, and select the live entertainment excluding sports series. Open the “Format” tab, select bar graph with percent stacking.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

Economists measure labor market tightness as the number of job vacancies per unemployed worker, which is a key factor in monetary policymakers’ decisions.

In the FRED graph above, the blue line shows the seasonally adjusted number of job openings as a fraction of the number of workers in the labor force since January 2020, just before the pandemic. The red line shows the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate. The shaded area shows the onset of the pandemic-related recession, when job postings declined and the unemployment rate jumped to a historically high 15%. But soon after, the unemployment rate declined sharply and job openings became more abundant.

The second graph, below, shows labor market tightness as the ratio of job openings to unemployment. This captures how many job opportunities there are for each person seeking a job. Labor market tightness reached around 2 in early 2022, meaning a very tight labor market with two job openings for each unemployed worker. During this period, many firms faced high demand; as a result, they attempted to hire many workers. Since then, the labor market has cooled significantly, with recent labor market tightness approaching one job for each person seeking a job. This coincides with a general cooldown in demand.

The current labor market is slightly less tight than it was right before the pandemic, though it still remains very tight by historical standards.

How these graphs were created: For the first graph, search FRED for and select “Job Openings: Total Nonfarm (JTSJOR).” From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Add Line” tab to search for and select “Unemployment Rate (UNRATE).” Finally, adjust the time series to be from 2020-01-01 to 2024-08-01.
For the second graph, search FRED for and select “Job Openings: Total Nonfarm (JTSJOR).” From the “Edit Graph” panel, go to the “Customize data” field and search for “Unemployment Rate (UNRATE)” and click “Add.” Then, in the “Formula” field type a/b and select “Apply” to obtain the ratio of job openings to the unemployment rate. Finally, adjust the time series to be from 2020-01-01 to 2024-07-01.

Suggested by Mick Dueholm and Serdar Ozkan.

Businesses reap profits when their total revenue exceeds total expenses. In other words, there’s a profit if the sale price of a good or a service is higher than the sum of its direct production cost (e.g., labor, materials) and the overhead costs of operating the business (e.g., administration). The term “markup” stands for the difference between production cost and sale price.

The FRED graph above shows data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis on the percent share of national income represented by corporate profits, before taxes, between 1947 and 2024. In broad terms, that share declined between 1947 and 1986, reaching an all-time low of 6.8%. It bounced back afterward, and at the time of this writing it stands at 16.7%.

The rise in business profits, with its associated rise in markups, is the focus of recent research by Ricardo Marto at the St. Louis Fed. He finds that the overall rise in markups has been driven by larger service markups, which have grown faster than markups on manufactured goods. His analysis goes on to consider the role of consumer preferences for services, concluding that higher incomes and an increased willingness to pay for services are the driving forces behind the rise in markups.

For more about this and other research, visit the publications page of the St. Louis Fed’s website, which offers an array of economic analysis and expertise provided by our staff.

How this graph wase created: Search FRED for “National income: Corporate profits before tax (without IVA and CCAdj).” Next, click the “Edit Graph” button and use the “Line 1” tab to customize the data by searching for and adding “National income: Corporate profits before tax (without IVA and CCAdj).” Last, type the formula (a/b)*100 and click on “Apply.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.