Federal Reserve Economic Data

Today, we compare the labor force participation rate of two groups of women. The FRED graph above shows that the rate for Black women is much more variable than the rate for White women, in both the short term and long term. Here, we’ll concentrate on the latter.

Before the 1990s, the labor force participation rate for White women was increasing at a faster rate than it was for Black women. Around the mid-1990s, the rate for White women began to flatten out; it began to fall after the Great Recession and dropped sharply during the COVID-19 recession. The rate for Black women has had a slightly different pattern after the 1990s, with substantial drops during and after recessions.

Now let’s look at the gap between these participation rates, which was at its lowest in the mid-1990s. Since then, the gap has tended to decrease when the labor force participation rate of Black women has fallen and increase when the rate has risen. Another way to put it is that the participation rate of White women is so stable that it doesn’t influence the gap. An exception is in the mid-2010s, when the rate for Black women flattened but the rate for White women decreased slightly.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for the series “Labor Force Participation Rate – 20 Yrs. & over, Black or African American Women.” Click “Edit Graph” and use the “Add Line” tab to search for and select the data series “Labor Force Participation Rate – 20 Yrs. & over, White Women.” Change the time frame to January 1, 1975, to the present.

Suggested by Victoria Gregory and Kevin Bloodworth.

Perennially, the five largest economies in Europe have been the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. The order in which we mention them has significance: This is how they rank when we look at them in terms of real GDP per capita, as in the FRED graph above.

Notice that the ranking has not changed in over 60 years, except for the most minor and temporary deviations. This period covers major economic events: the integration of these economies in the Economic Union, oil price shocks, the opening of Eastern Europe, and more recently a financial crisis, Brexit, Covid-19, and a war in Ukraine.

This ranking is different from the ranking of these economies by their total real GDP, as in the FRED graph below. First, Germany has a population that is significantly larger than the others, noting here that Germany encompasses East and West Germany before reunification in 1990 for these statistics. Second, the largest European economics have followed quite different demographic trajectories, leading to significant implications for the size of their economies: Notice how the UK was initially first and temporarily dropped to fourth, while Italy was second before suffering a significant slowdown that has currently brought it down to fourth.

In the end, the size of the economy matters little when countries are integrated economically and politically, as they are within the European Union, except for limited circumstances related to policy decisions.

How these graphs were created: Search FRED for “per capita GDP Germany” and take the series in constant prices. Click on “Edit Graph,” open the “Add Line” tab, and search for “per capita GDP France.” Repeat for the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain. For the second graph, follow a similar procedure.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

The FRED Blog has discussed how the increased popularity of video streaming over the internet gradually decreased employment in video tape and disc rental establishments. Today we explore a related topic: how consuming news over the internet has reduced employment in the print media industry.

The FRED graph above shows annual data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on the number of persons employed in three sectors of the information industry directly connected to print media. Each of the stacked colored area in the graph represents one print media sector: book publishers (in green), periodical publishers (in blue), and newspaper publishers (in red).

Starting around 2000, employment in those three sectors steadily decreased. At the time of this writing, employment figures are at a 35-year low. Why are the proverbial printing presses slowing down?

This is likely another example of consumer preferences swayed by the easy access to internet-based services. Using a different dataset from the BLS, Mason Walker from the Pew Research Center compares the shrinking print newspaper employment to the expanding employment in the digital publishing industry.

Although those figures don’t point to a large-scale switch of workers between media sectors, they reflect the substitutability of the means to consume information. More broadly, overall employment in the information industry recorded a slow rebound after 2012. Keep in mind that the headline figure also includes motion pictures, sound recording, broadcasting, communications, and web services. So, it’s fair to say that even though the overall consumer demand for print media has definitely decreased, the overall consumption of information and entertainment hasn’t.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “Employment for Information: Periodical Publishers (NAICS 51112) in the United States.” Next, click the “Edit Graph” button and use the “Add Line” tab to search for and add “Employment for Information: Newspaper Publishers (NAICS 511110) in the United States” and “Employment for Information: Book Publishers (NAICS 511130) in the United States.” Last, use the “Format” tab to change the graph type to “Area” and the stacking to “Normal.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.