It is election season, so we face several more months of claims about the U.S. economy. Predictably, the economy is neither as good as the incumbents profess it to be nor as bad as those running to unseat them assert. The real truth is somewhere in between. Of course, each side will be armed with…
Indiana’s economic future will be primarily determined by the share of Hoosier adults who graduated from college. If that share remains low, our economy will languish, our incomes will continue to fall further behind the national average and our best-educated citizens will relocate elsewhere. This truth cannot be too often repeated, but it begs other…
From shortly after the Civil War until perhaps three decades ago, the United States passed through a remarkable period of economic convergence. During this time, counties became more similar to other counties and states became more alike other states, at least in terms of GDP, per capita income and other measures of economic performance. The…
Indianapolis Power & Light Co. officials outlined their plans for shuttering two units at the utility’s massive Petersburg Generating Station as part of a 20-year strategy plan for power generation that all electric utilities are required to file every three years.
I released my 2020 economist forecast last week, projecting the U.S. economy to slow significantly next year. The model I use projects that annualized growth rates will slip from 1.9 percent in the first quarter of 2020 down to 1.7 percent by the year’s end. Here in Indiana, my forecasting model has growth slowing to…
I deliver my annual forecast later this week, so let’s review where we have come as an economy since the end of the Great Recession. The news is far more dismal than I prefer, but it is wise to know where we are coming from before discussing our future. The Great Recession was deep and…
The year 1971 was important for economic development in Indiana. For in that year, the actual number of jobs created in firms attracted directly by government policies declined. In 1971, the U.S. economy chugged along well, and overall job creation in Indiana was strong. However, we lost jobs among those businesses who produce goods and…
There seems to be a great deal of recent romanticizing the 1950s and 1960s. This is particularly the case with a vague vision of a middle class and middle-class neighborhoods. Taken in parts, this is natural reminiscing. Here in the Midwest, these decades were relatively prosperous, and a young man leaving high school could look…
Originally posted on Chalkbeat by Emma Kate Fittes on November 15, 2019 Indiana teachers aren’t going on strike, but experts say they are putting lawmakers on notice. Tuesday’s fast-growing rally is expected to cancel school for half of the state’s students while as many as 12,000 teachers descend on the Statehouse to make a list…
The economic recovery beginning in the summer of 2009 is now over for Indiana. Factory employment is down for the year, and overall employment is on trend to be down in 2019. Overall employment has only declined in Indiana a dozen times since the end of World War II, marking precisely the dozen post-war recessions….
