The United States has been the world’s largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) since 2006. Every day, foreign companies establish new operations in the United States or provide additional capital to established businesses. With the world’s largest consumer market, skilled and productive workers, a highly innovative environment, appropriate legal protections, a predictable regulatory...

Hurricane/ Post-Tropical Storm Sandy struck the New Jersey coast on October 29, 2012, inflicting billions of dollars of damage. This report examines potential long-term economic effects of the storm in terms of losses and gains in economic activity. This impact analysis is for all the counties in New Jersey and the 13 counties in lower New York that that were declared as disaster areas by the...

Manufacturing jobs, including new manufacturing jobs, continue to deserve their reputation as good jobs. We use a relatively new data source, the Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI), to analyze the earnings of new hires relative to incumbent workers in both manufacturing and non-manufacturing. We find that new hires in the manufacturing sector earn more than new hires in other industries and have...

Contradictory news articles about the U.S. auto industry have appeared in recent days. On the positive side:"Auto Sales Showed Powerful Gains Across the Board in June" (NYT 7/2/2013) and "A Revitalized Car Industry Cranks Up U.S. Exports" (WSJ 7/1/2013). On the negative side, however, we have: "With Mexican auto manufacturing boom, new worries" (WP 7/1/2013). This is a brief attempt to reconcile...

Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey (NJ) on October 29, 2012. Several months after the storm, stakeholders were still assessing the damage and the long-term economic effects on the region. To help with this effort, the Economic and Statistics Administration developed this report which provides baseline information on demographic and economic conditions in these areas. This report was requested by...

While it is commonly understood that broadband is less available in rural communities and more available in urban communities, a simple two-way, rural-urban comparison masks the fact that there is considerable variation in availability within these two types of communities. By assigning communities to one of five categories, it becomes clear that there is not a simple rural/urban divide. Rather...

The Statistics Working Group, under the auspices of the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, conducted a second reconciliation study to explain and quantify discrepancies in the official U.S.-China bilateral merchandise trade statistics. This is an update to a previous report prepared by the working group.

Manufacturing has been one of the major bright spots in the economic recovery of the last few years, contributing more than 25 percent of the overall growth in GDP between 2009 and 2011 and adding roughly 500,000 new jobs between the beginning of 2010 and the end of 2012. This trend is especially welcome as manufacturing jobs often provide higher wages and better benefits than non-manufacturing...