A reader bewails the failure of the Fed to use “new” tools like “big data”. And yet, 10 seconds to type into the Fed’s search engine yields dozens of pages of results. Why is it that some people fail to understand the limitations of their own knowledge, and simultaneously refuse to use “search engines”. Anyway, here’s excerpts from the first two pages of results:
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- The Fed – Tracking the Labor Market with “Big Data“Big Data” Tomaz Cajner, Leland Crane, Ryan Decker, Adrian Hamins-Puertolas…Big Data“,” FEDS Notes. Washington: Board of Governors of the FederalURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/tracking-the-labor-market-with-big-data-20190920.htm
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- FRB: FEDS Notes: Using big data in finance: Example of sentiment-extraction from news articlesbig data in finance: Example of sentiment-extraction from news articles…big data” to understand market “sentiment.” In this note, I will drawURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/notes/feds-notes/2014/using-big-data-in-finance-example-of-sentiment-extraction-from-news-articles-20140326.html
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- Federal Reserve Board – Nontraditional Data, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing in Macroeconomicsbig) data sources and new empirical methods for macroeconomic analysis…big–data-macro-conf@frb.gov. Organizing Committee: Christopher Kurz, DivisionURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/conferences/nontraditional-data-machine-learning-natural-language-processing-in-macroeconomics-20191001.htm
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- Introductory remarks by Vice Chair Clarida – Federal Reserve Boardbig data and new techniques for macroeconomic analysis. I am pleased to…big data and new techniques for central banking and on the possibilitiesURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/clarida20191001a.htm
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- Bill of Lading Data in International Trade Research with an Application to the COVID-19 Pandemicbig data” to measure economic activity. These data are often availableURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2021066pap.pdf
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- The Fed – FEDS Notes – 2014big data in finance: Example of sentiment-extraction from news articles…big data” to understand market “sentiment.” DOI: https://doi.org/10.17016URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/2014-index.htm
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- Financial Conditions and Economic Activity: Insights from Machine LearningBig Data; Recession Prediction; Variable Selection JEL Codes: E17, E44…big data” issues. The analysis herein focuses on simple LASSO; DieboldURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2020095pap.pdf
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- Speech by Governor Brainard on supporting responsible use of AI and equitable outcomes in financial servicesBig Data Challenges,” The Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2020, https…climate-researchers-enlist-big-cloud-providers-for-big–data– challengesURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/files/brainard20210112a.pdf
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- Speech by Chair Powell on data-dependent monetary policy in an evolving economy – Federal Reserve Boardbig data to improve our grasp of the job market in the face of such revisionsURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20191008a.htm
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- Speech by Governor Lael Brainard on what we are learning about artificial intelligence in financial services – Federal Reserve Boardbig data–are all increasingly accessible. Due to an early commitmentURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20181113a.htm
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- The Fed – Report to the Congress on the Use of the ACH System and Other Payment Mechanisms for Remittance Transfers to Foreign Countries – May 2019Skip to main content Report to the Congress on the Use of the ACH System and Other Payment Mechanisms for Remittance Transfers to Foreign CountriesURL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2019-may-ach-report-other-payment-mechanisms.htm
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- big data, economic measurement, labor market, state-space models DOI:URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/improving-the-accuracy-of-economic-measurement-with-multiple-data-sources-the-case-of-payroll-employment-data.htm
Why would a business lie to the Fed? Why would financial firms use Eurodollars, which are outside the Fed’s jurisdiction? How much private clearing is CHIPS really doing?
How much you want to bet their “big data” excludes 96% of the universe, like physics excludes dark matter and dark energy?
You won the Jack Welch award for the dumbest jerk of the year
From the final link:
《The CES and the ADP employment data are each derived from roughly equal-sized samples. We argue that combining CES and ADP data series reduces the measurement error inherent in both data sources. 》
Is this Big Data, or Big Imputation?
This annotated review is useful and appreciated, but the criticism that drew the review was made in bad faith and was intentionally offensive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/business/kroger-grocery-stores-workers-pay.html
February 12, 2022
Business Booms at Kroger-Owned Grocery Stores, but Workers Are Left Behind
A number of the stores’ nearly 500,000 employees have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks.
By Sapna Maheshwari and Michael Corkery
When Enrique Romero Jr. finishes his shift fulfilling online orders at a Fred Meyer grocery store in Bellingham, Wash., he often walks to a nearby plasma donation center. There, he has his blood drained, and a hydrating solution is pumped into his veins, a process that leaves him tired and cold.
Mr. Romero, 30, said selling his plasma made him feel “like cattle.” But the income he earns from it — roughly $500 a month — is more reliable than his wages at Fred Meyer, which is owned by the grocery giant Kroger. His part-time hours often fluctuate, and he struggles to find enough money to cover his rent, his groceries and the regular repairs required to keep his 2007 Chevy Aveo on the road.
“The economy we have is grueling,” he said.
Business has boomed during the pandemic for Kroger, the biggest supermarket chain in the United States and the fourth-largest employer in the Fortune 500. It owns more than 2,700 locations, and its brands include Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer, Ralphs, Smith’s, Pick ’n Save and even Murray’s Cheese in New York City. The company, which is based in Cincinnati, said in December that it was expecting sales growth of at least 13.7 percent over two years. The company’s stock has risen about 36 percent over the past year.
But that success has not trickled down to its vast work force of nearly 500,000 employees, a number of whom have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks to feed their families….
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/business/economy/ibm-age-discrimination.html
February 12, 2022
Making ‘Dinobabies’ Extinct: IBM’s Push for a Younger Work Force
Documents released in an age-discrimination case appear to show high-level discussion about paring the ranks of older employees.
By Noam Scheiber
In recent years, former IBM employees have accused the company of age discrimination in a variety of legal filings and press accounts, arguing that IBM sought to replace thousands of older workers with younger ones to keep pace with corporate rivals.
Now it appears that top IBM executives were directly involved in discussions about the need to reduce the portion of older employees at the company, sometimes disparaging them with terms of art like “dinobabies.”
A trove of previously sealed documents made public by a Federal District Court on Friday show executives discussing plans to phase out older employees and bemoaning the company’s relatively low percentage of millennials.
The documents, which emerged from a lawsuit contending that IBM engaged in a yearslong effort to shift the age composition of its work force, appear to provide the first public piece of direct evidence about the role of the company’s leadership in the effort.
“These filings reveal that top IBM executives were explicitly plotting with one another to oust older workers from IBM’s work force in order to make room for millennial employees,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a lawyer for the plaintiff in the case….
I did some work with ibm a number of years ago. What I noticed was some older workers were not enthusiastic about developing newer it skills. They may have been skilled, but in antiquated technology. I am not sure how well ibm was conducting continuing education for their workforce, which may have exacerbated the problem. But machine learning, AI and quantum computing was not on any of the older workers radar. That was problematic for the company, considering their push into those areas today.
Off-topic but related to the blog’s broader ongoing discussion
Tell the workers at Kroger and their affiliates that there’s wage induced inflation right now, or a “shortage of workers” at a company that avoids handing out full-time jobs, avoids paying full-time benefits, and literally works at company policies which cause high employee turnover, or gives laborers hours which make it impossible to get 2nd jobs “moonlighting”/ “side hustles” etc.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/business/kroger-grocery-stores-workers-pay.html
There, he has his blood drained, and a hydrating solution is pumped into his veins, a process that leaves him tired and cold.
Mr. Romero, 30, said selling his plasma made him feel “like cattle.” But the income he earns from it — roughly $500 a month — is more reliable than his wages at Fred Meyer, which is owned by the grocery giant Kroger. His part-time hours often fluctuate, and he struggles to find enough money to cover his rent, his groceries and the regular repairs required to keep his 2007 Chevy Aveo on the road.
……….
Business has boomed during the pandemic for Kroger, the biggest supermarket chain in the United States and the fourth-largest employer in the Fortune 500. It owns more than 2,700 locations, …….. The company, which is based in Cincinnati, said in December that it was expecting sales growth of at least 13.7 percent over two years. The company’s stock has risen about 36 percent over the past year.
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But that success has not TRICKLED DOWN n to its vast work force of nearly 500,000 employees, a number of whom have reported being homeless, receiving government food stamps or relying on food banks to feed their families. A brief strike in Colorado last month by workers, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, at dozens of Kroger-owned King Soopers locations brought renewed scrutiny to the issues of pay and working conditions for grocery workers, who have been on the front lines throughout the pandemic.
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75 percent of Kroger workers said they were food insecure, meaning they lacked consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. About 14 percent said they were homeless or had been homeless in the previous year, and 63 percent said they did not earn enough money to pay for basic expenses every month.
“There is a race to the bottom that’s been going on for a while with Walmart and other large retail stores, and also restaurants, and to reverse that trend is not easy,” said Daniel Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable.
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working at a grocery store no longer provides the stable income and middle-class lifestyle that it did 30 years ago, workers say. The Economic Roundtable report studied contracts dating back to 1990 and said the most experienced clerks — known as journeymen — in Southern California made roughly $28 per hour in today’s dollars while working full-time schedules. Wages for top-paid clerks today are 22 percent lower, and those workers are far more likely to be working part-time hours.
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Kroger has one of the country’s starkest gaps between a chief executive’s compensation and that of the median employee. Rodney McMullen, Kroger’s chief executive since 2014, earned $22.4 million in 2020, while the median employee earned $24,617 — a ratio of 909 to 1. The average C.E.O.-to-worker pay ratio in the S&P 500 is 299 to 1, with grocery chains like Costco (193 to 1) and Publix (153 to 1) lower than that.”
It’s interesting that in a nation which has many media outlets claiming a “worker shortage”, a company that employs 500,000 people (not sure if that is after or before they closed 3 California stores due to a local $5 an hour wage increase mandate) feels no inclination at all to increase their hourly wages. I wonder how that reality might be??
Keep in mind as you read about these Kroger workers who go months (years??) at a time homeless, that in many states you cannot get voting registration without a legal place of residence. When they fill out the info for the voting registration card after working their ass off all day at Kroger, in the blank after it says “place of residence” do they write in, “my Chevy compact vehicle”?? That’s what Republicans want and makes Republican legislators smaile and chuckle on their way to work everyday. That and how Nancy Pelosi lets senators and House Reps purchase Krogers stock anytime they wish also makes Republicans smile. Because when Pelosi isn’t cackling about buying premium ice cream during a severe national depression on a widely watched TV show, that’s “How Nancy rolls”/
Said reader got lost in his big data forgetting how to do basic research
Big data is sort of a hot topic. And the Fed has some money and spends it internally on people, offices, conferences, IT. Had a young lady friend that worked there. So, sure, they’ll have some big data hires.
Let Big Data (capitalized for that extra sizzle) do the important job it is most suited for…figuring out movie recommendations for me that I haven’t seen, but would enjoy. So far, not impressed. Turing test…fail!
Actually I have a lot more interest/respect for old school statistics and even just analyis and critical thinking. How many ex Goldman, ex McKinsey types go to the Fed. (I know, I know, could Google it. But it ain’t a lot.)
But it’s not even clear to me that better data gathering is needed. Like if they just had a better measurement of the pulse, they could stimulate the patient better. mean maybe we need more, maybe we need less money supply. Maybe Keynes was right, maybe Milton was. But I don’t see data gathering as resolving that.
One of the things the government does well is this data gathering. Sure And then free usage. Fun to play with. But if Volkher had weekly or daily CPI (or bimonthly) instead of monthly would it have changed his actions?
I mean, I can look at EIA (not the Fed, but making a point). They did realize some issues with analyzing US production during shale. And adjusted their methodology to add the 914 survey and the DPR. But it was more of a normal evolution (realizing old methods not working for a more dynamic situation) and the fixes were relatively normal…something that could have been done in the 1930s even with some clerks and typists (even now, there’s a pdf form option for for producers that don’t want to do online submissions). But would there be any huge advantage from doing the 914 weekly? Or going from a 90% market survey to 95% (sampling more of the long tail of small guys). I doubt it qualitatively changes the insight. Would be more work for little value.
One goal of big data is to identify true relationships that you never even knew existed. Subtle relationships that only emerge with enough data. Most of the data we collect today is biased towards confirming and reinforcing what we already know. Big data is quite useful in pushing us past that bottleneck. Most people who are against big data appear to have a benefit in keeping that bottleneck around.
If people knew the limit of their knowledge, the volume of blog post comments [likely] would decrease 90%.
“Big Data” capabilities are being increasingly emphasized in China, with remarkable effects and effectiveness. The continual flow of data on energy use and pricing allowed for a quick enough resolution of an energy shortage that foreign writers were filing reports on the shortage after corrections had taken hold. Extensive price data flows and analysis allowed for a complete taming of consumer inflation through 2021. The continuing work on poverty alleviation through China is increasingly supported by digital data collection and analysis. There are critical reasons building a 5G network nationally is so emphasized.
https://english.news.cn/20220209/e609eb1974294e60886e1721efaf534b/c.html
February 9, 2022
China boasts over 1.4 mln 5G base stations
BEIJING — China has set up a total of 1.43 million 5G base stations as of the end of 2021 amid the country’s efforts to boost information and communication technologies, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The figure accounted for over 60 percent of the global total, with 10.1 5G base stations serving every 10,000 people in China, nearly doubling from the end of 2020, the ministry said.
Last year, China’s investment in 5G reached 184.9 billion yuan (about 29 billion U.S. dollars), a share of 45.6 percent in fixed-asset investment of the telecommunication industry, up 8.9 percentage points from that of a year ago.
China will make steady and orderly progress toward the establishment of 5G services and gigabit fiber-optic networks in 2022, the ministry noted.
The country expects to see the number of 5G users exceed 560 million by 2023, and every 10,000 people in China will enjoy more than 18 5G base stations, stated a guideline released last year.
you do know why they (we) will have so many transmit receive “cells”?
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-09-06/China-sets-up-world-s-first-big-data-research-center-for-SDGs-13kLckARdde/index.html
September 6, 2021
China sets up world’s first big data research center for SDGs
China established an International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Beijing on Monday.
It is the world’s first international scientific research institution using big data to facilitate the implementation of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – a blueprint adopted by all UN member states in 2015 with 17 SDGs and 169 targets at the core for peace and prosperity.
The center will establish a global monitoring and evaluation system for SDGs, providing relevant UN agencies and member states with data sharing, technological assistance and decision-making support.
Big Earth data, a type of big data associated with the Earth sciences, plays a role in SDGs research….
A few days ago – always hoping for a housing crash – Princeton Steve gleefully told us that mortgage rates had reached 4%. FRED shows the most recent data from the Federal Reserve and it seems the rate was 3.69%:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US
I guess you could chalk this up to a rounding error. Or maybe Princeton Steve wants Big Data so he continue his parade of disinformation.
Mortgage rates are going above 4%. Like it matters. That isn’t what creates housing crashes.