West Virginia's natural gas industry has received significant attention in the past few years, particularly with the development of the Marcellus Shale. The increase in attention and activity has led to an increase in jobs in the industry, but what exactly are the jobs and are they all reacting to the Marcellus boom equally? In their…
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The Bureau of Business and Economic Research at WVU recently released population projections for West Virginia over the next 15 years. According to their projections, West Virginia's population will grow by 39,811 from 2010 to 2015, an increase of 2.1 percent. While the projected total population changes are minor, the changes in demographics are drastic. The following…
Our recent Jobs Count report showed that the economy has added zero net jobs since June and the unemployment rate remains above 8 percent. As a previous post had noted, the momentum the economy seemed to have been building during the recover has been lost over the past few months. However, one sector of the economy has been…
A little humor for the day via Krugman Blog..
One idea we've championed in the past is the creation of a trust fund for economic development and diversification funded through an increase in West Virginia's severance tax levied on coal and natural gas extraction. But would raising the severance tax make it too expensive to mine coal or drill for natural gas in West Virginia, and…
I've talked before about the relationship (or lack thereof) between the level of business taxation and economic growth in the states, concluding that things like quality public services, access to markets and inputs, and a quality workforce all matter more to economic growth and prosperity than taxes. But there is another argument out there that is closely related to the business…
Friday morning's news that there was no job growth in the month of August sent disappointment throughout the country, and stoked fears that another recession may be around the corner. The meager 17,000 private sector jobs added were offset by an equal loss of public sector workers, as state and local governments continued to make cutbacks. A…
While economists point to December 2007 as the official beginning of the national recession, and to June 2009 as the official end, that doesn't mean that each state was impacted by the recession only during that stretch of time. In fact, when it comes to jobs, when each state began to feel the affects of the…
The West Virginia Department of Commerce recently posted a "success story" featuring Paul Lambert, president of STaSIS Engineering, an auto service company that moved from California to West Virginia in 2009, and is planning to expand. So why did Mr. Lambert move his company to West Virginia? Isn't our business personal property tax a job killer? Aren't we out of…
In Thursday's edition of the Charleston Gazette, gubernatorial candidate Bill Maloney echoed a familiar refrain, arguing that the state needs to reduce its business taxes to achieve economic growth, citing "supply-side economics." It's an issue I've discussed before, and the latest evidence continues to confirm that low business taxes are not associated with stronger economic growth, nor do they make…