An Eastern Iowa economist released great news yesterday! According to economist David Osterberg, the pace of Iowa's job creation is the highest in 16 years.
O. Kay Henderson with Radio Iowa covered the story. Read an excerpt here:
An eastern Iowa economist says the latest data shows job growth in Iowa is better than it’s been in 16 years.
Economist David Osterberg, executive director of the Iowa Policy Project, says from January through the end of May, there’s been a gain of about 3500 non-farm jobs per month. “We tend to look at the longer term,” Osterberg says. “We don’t look at unemployment rate as much as we do at job growth, but now looking at five months of this, we’re cautiously optimistic.”
That pace of job growth hasn’t been recorded in Iowa since 1994. “If you look at the job creation in the first five months of the year, it’s rather boisterous,” Osterberg says. “…Back in the 1990s when there were a lot of jobs and things were going well, we were ‘making’ about 3000 jobs a month, so this is above that pace.”