A little more than a week ago, all eyes were on the February Employment Situation report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Establishment Survey surprised on the upside: nonfarm payrolls rose 175,000 in February, and payrolls were revised upward for December and January. The Household Survey indicated that the unemployment rate edged up slightly to 6.7 percent in February from 6.6 percent the prior month, and the labor force participation rate held steady at 63.0 percent.
These are some of the facts on the table as the Federal Open Market Committee meets today and tomorrow and, judging from recent comments from the folks who will be at that meeting, those facts (and more like them) will be very much front of mind.
These days, multiple tools are available to assist both casual and expert observers in navigating the rich and sometimes baffling story of labor markets in the post-Great Recession world. Just last week, you could find a new "Guide for the Perplexed" on labor market slack in The New York Times and an interactive feature on the "Eight Different Faces of the Labor Market" at the New York Fed's Liberty Street Economics blog. And that's not to mention the most recent update of the Atlanta Fed’s own 13-headed Labor Market Spider Chart.
All of these contributions reflect a great deal of effort to understand the story of what's happening in labor markets. As part of that effort, our colleagues across the Federal Reserve System have been taking deeper dives into employment statistics and reaching out into their communities to get a better understanding of labor force dynamics and workforce development issues. This research can be found on the various Reserve Bank and Board websites.
To facilitate access to that work, the Atlanta Fed's Center for Human Capital Studies has worked to bring those resources together in the Federal Reserve Human Capital Compendium (HCC). We are pleased to announce that we have recently enhanced the HCC so you can perform simple or advanced searches that allow you to research whatever facet of that research strikes your fancy (see the figure):
We encourage you to take your own deeper dive into the latest research across the Federal Reserve System by browsing the HCC or searching out those labor topics that have piqued your interest lately.
By Whitney Mancuso, a senior economic analyst in the Atlanta Fed's research department