Financial markets—specifically derivatives—contain information about the range of probable future short-term interest rates.

Zheng Liu is a vice president and director of the Center for Pacific Basin Studies in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Brief summaries of SF Fed economic research that explain in reader-friendly terms what our work means for the people we serve.

Sylvain Leduc is executive vice president and director of Economic Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

The labor force participation (LFP) rate for prime-age workers surged from early 2021 through early 2023, especially for women. This helped reduce the large shortfall of available workers relative to ...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate to essentially zero. It took further measures to support the functioning of financial markets and the flow of ...

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing severe disruptions to daily life and economic activity. Reliable assessments of the economic fallout in this rapidly evolving situation require timely data. Existing ...

People receiving unemployment insurance benefits during the COVID-19 recession were entitled to $600 of additional payments per week through July. This large increase in benefit payments raised a ...

The 2022 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice finds that the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to affect the way U.S. consumers use and hold cash. The share of payments made in cash dropped sharply from ...

Media accounts documenting the rising cost of a college education and relatively bleak job prospects for new college graduates have raised questions about whether a four-year college degree is still ...

In January 2012, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced an explicit inflation target to the public for the first time in its history, stating, “the Committee judges that inflation at the ...