The State of the U.S. Heartland

Brookings and the Walton Family Foundation teamed up to produce The State of the Heartland.

It's a detailed study of the U.S. Heartland using 26 socioeconomic variables to assess how the region's economy has been performing since the Great Recession. 

The quick summary is The Heartland is doing just fine.

Their definition of the Heartland, BTW, consists of 19 mostly inland states, with the only surprise potentially being the inclusion of some of the deep south states.

No doubt the Walton Family Foundation's involvement influenced this definition. But we think it's useful to have southern states included. In fact, we'd like to see similar reports for all U.S. regions and states.

The three key study findings, according to the report, are:

1. The Heartland economy is doing better than is sometimes portrayed.  Growth measured by job and output growth have been steady, if not stellar, since 2010 with all of the Heartland states adding jobs and 18 increasing their output. Prosperity has also been slowly rising as all 19 states enjoyed increased standards of living, all 19 posted increases in the average wage, and 12 saw productivity increases.

2. The Heartland, however, is not monolithic: Its economy varies widely across place. In this regard, the region is a checkerboard of sub-regions, states, and local communities where some Heartland places are thriving while others are deteriorating—just as in other regions. 

3. Serious deficits in the region’s human capital and innovation capacity pose the most serious challenges to improving future prosperity. On this front the factbook’s indicators depict a region that is—in most places—struggling to amass the human and technology capacity needed to support broad-based prosperity.

The study website has lots of interactive features that lets you play with the data, including the ability to zoom in by state. It's well worth visiting.

Regular readers know we've long been bullish about the Midwest (we're also biased, since we're from that part of the country). We even included it in our Top 10 Small Business Trends list in 2013. 

We did this because The Heartland has a lot of offer, including low costs and high levels of livability. And as this study states, they need more human capital.

So if you're looking for a place to live, consider The Heartland.

from Small Business Labs https://ift.tt/2ySulIs
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT