Forecasting the U.S. and Wisconsin Economies in 2022

1.19.22. Junjie Guo and Noah Williams. This paper provides forecasts for the United States and Wisconsin economies in 2022. For each economy, we estimate a mixed-frequency vector auto-regression model using data both before March 2020 and after June 2020, with the extreme observations between March and June 2020 dropped to eliminate their impacts on the model estimates.

Early Evidence on the End of Expanded Federal Unemployment Benefits

7.30.21. Noah Williams. Beginning in May a number of states announced that they would be ending participation in the federal enhanced and expanded unemployment benefit programs instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, 26 states decided to end their participation in these programs before their scheduled expiration in September. Due to limited data, this report focuses on the first four states that ended benefits on June 12, and the additional eight states that ended them on June 19.

Current Private Indicators on the Wisconsin Economy: Small Business Employment and Consumer Spending

7.22.21. Noah Williams. I use two private data sources to analyze the labor market and consumer spending in the state of Wisconsin. I first analyze labor market data from a sample of mostly small businesses. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, by mid-April 2020 48% of these businesses were closed, with employment down 59%.