Special Publications

2025

Worker and Learner Perspectives: Insights from Participants in Outcomes-Based Training Programs

This chapter in the Social Finance Institute’s Workforce Realigned, Vol. II highlights the importance of qualitative feedback for developing, adapting, and evaluating training programs.

2024

Worker Voices Special Brief: Using Qualitative Research to Understand the Economy: A Toolkit

Analysts with the Federal Reserve’s Worker Voices Project have created a user friendly, downloadable toolkit to teach others how to employ community-engaged qualitative research practices in community impact assessments and research.

Worker Voices Special Brief: Self-Employment, Dreams Versus Reality

This brief discusses the variety of reasons that self-employed workers are pushed or pulled into self-employment and compares those motivations to understand the disconnect between aspirations and actual experiences.

Understanding SNAP’s Role

This article by the Richmond Fed explores the role of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in alleviating poverty. It highlights enrollment trends, key outcomes, and the part played by community organizations.

Coping with Hardship: Navigating Economic Challenges amid Pandemic-era Constraints

Low- and moderate-income, Black, and Hispanic workers were particularly affected by a loss of income during the pandemic. This American Voices Project brief examines how survey participants tackled financial hardship during the recent crisis.

Worker Voices Special Brief: Pursuing Advancement through Personal Investment

This brief explores a significant topic that emerged from the focus groups of 2022—strategies to secure improved employment outcomes. For these workers, personal investment yielded mixed results.

2023

Worker Voices Special Brief: Barriers to Employment

This brief explores how barriers such as a lack of training or a lack of childcare often prevent workers without four-year degrees from securing a quality job even in a strong labor market.

Worker Voices Special Brief: Perspectives on Job Quality

From job security to employee engagement, treatment, and compensation, this brief from the Federal Reserve System’s Worker Voices explores how noncollege workers describe a quality job.

New Study Features Unique View on Labor Market

A new study from the Federal Reserve System, "Worker Voices: Shifting Perspectives and Expectations on Employment," looks at how job seekers and workers in lower-wage roles navigated the labor market throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Late Start: Understanding Public Investments in Education

This research brief from the Federal Reserve’s Early Care and Education Work Group provides an overview of some of the factors limiting the supply of early education and care.

Closing the Digital Skill Divide

New research by the Atlanta Fed in partnership with the National Skills Coalition provides data to communities, businesses, educators, and policymakers on practices that focus on the skills aspect of the digital divide.

2022

Childcare Affordability Affects Labor Market and Family Choices

Challenges parents face in paying for childcare can alter the way they interact with the labor market. The pandemic hasn’t helped. Read a new brief from the Federal Reserve’s Early Care and Education Work Group.

Why CRA Modernization Matters

Vice Chair Lael Brainard of the Board of Governors and President Raphael Bostic of the Atlanta Fed discuss why it is essential to modernize the regulations that implement the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). They also address the continued relevance that the CRA has in communities in the Southeast and across the country.

2021

American Voices Project: Monitoring the Crisis

The American Voices Project examines the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on people across the country. The Atlanta and Boston Feds and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality are cosponsoring the series.

Considerations in Deploying ARPA Funds for Childcare

Investments in childcare can support the nation’s economic recovery and address challenges that perpetuate inequities in access. This brief shares considerations for ways to provide financial assistance to providers and the families they serve.

Navigating a Crisis: An Uneven Recovery for Communities and Organizations in the Southeast

Community and Economic Development staff talked to organizations that serve LMI households, BIPOC communities, and others that have experienced chronic disinvestment to better understand their challenges and successes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Small Business Survey

Reports information about the business performance, financing needs and choices, and borrowing experiences of businesses with fewer than 500 employees.

Special Briefing: Despite CDC Moratorium, Atlanta-Area Eviction Filings Hit Low-Income, Minority Neighborhoods

This paper examines eviction filings that occurred during the pandemic in the Atlanta metro area. The authors find that a neighborhood’s racial composition and median income serve as strong indicators of pandemic eviction filings.

Tackling Vacancy and Abandonment: Strategies and Impacts after the Great Recession

This joint research publication by the Atlanta Fed, Cleveland Fed, and Center for Community Progress explores the challenges associated with vacant and abandoned properties since the mortgage crisis and offers lessons for future policies and strategies.

2020

The American Dream or Just an Illusion? Understanding Land Contract Trends in the Midwest Pre- and Post-Crisis

This paper examines contract for deed activity across six midwestern states. Researchers from the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Chicago, and Cleveland collaborated on the paper.

Small Businesses of Color Recovery Guide

The purpose of this guide is to help support the recovery of small businesses of color by providing readers with a range of ideas in the areas of small business credit and capital, education and training, policy recommendations, and community support. The Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Kansas City collaborated on the publication.

Other Publications

Identifying Opportunity Occupations in the Nation's Largest Metropolitan Economies

The infographic identifies good-paying jobs in the 100 largest U.S. metro areas for workers who have less than a four-year college degree. The Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Cleveland, and Philadelphia collaborated on the findings.
Infographic | Full Report