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Articles by Patrick Barkey
The economic contribution of Montana’s hard rock mining industry
To say that the minerals, metals, fuels and compounds that come out of the ground are what make the economy run and modern life possible is not an overstatement. From the cutting-edge technology in the microchip-powered smart phones we carry with us to the simplicity of the concrete foundations in homes and offices, mining products are ubiquitous across the spectrum of products we consume and produce. It is difficult to imagine an economy without them.
Montana's Electricity Future: New Project Evaluates the Adequacy of Our Electricity Supply
It has been said that many people only care about the power system when they are experiencing a power outage. Electricity customers have come to expect that power will be available when they need it most – and at a cost that is “reasonable.” That expectation has been met, almost without exception, by Montana’s power providers.
How Much Longer Will Supply Chains Stress Montana?
The way many of us learn about how the things we own work is when they stop working. Like your toaster. Or maybe your car. And in the year 2022, we all started to learn about global supply chains for the same reason. Because for an astonishingly broad array of goods and components, they struggled to keep up with demand. Getting a promise to deliver instead of an actual delivery has become all too common for businesses and consumers alike.
Will supply chain issues last forever? – Daily Montanan
The way many of us learn about how the things we own work is when they stop working. Like your toaster. Or maybe your car. And in the year 2022, we all started to learn about global supply chains for the same reason. For an astonishingly broad array of goods and components, they struggled to keep up with demand. Getting a promise to deliver instead of an actual delivery has become all too common for businesses and consumers alike.
Will supply chain issues last forever?
The way many of us learn about how the things we own work is when they stop working. Like your toaster. Or maybe your car. And in the year 2022, we all started to learn about global supply chains for the same reason. For an astonishingly broad array of goods and components, they struggled to keep up with demand. Getting a promise to deliver instead of an actual delivery has become all too common for businesses and consumers alike.
Guest column: How much longer will supply chains stress Montana?
The way many of us learn about how the things we own work is when they stop working. Like your toaster. Or maybe your car. And in the year 2022, we all started to learn about global supply chains for the same reason. Because for an astonishingly broad array of goods and components, they struggled to keep up with demand. Getting a promise to deliver instead of an actual delivery has become all too common for businesses and consumers alike.
How much longer will supply chains stress Montana?
The way many of us learn about how the things we own work is when they stop working. Like your toaster. Or maybe your car. And in the year 2022, we all started to learn about global supply chains for the same reason. Because for an astonishingly broad array of goods and components, they struggled to keep up with demand. Getting a promise to deliver instead of an actual delivery has become all too common for businesses and consumers alike.
The Economic Impact of Filming Yellowstone in Montana
Film industry activity has grown significantly in Montana in recent years. Since the enactment of the Montana Economic Development Industry Advancement (MEDIA) Act on July 1, 2019, there has been a 70% increase in content production from 10 years ago. Despite that increase, the footprint of the industry remains modest, and knowledge of the scope and nature of its activities is limited.
How will today's imbalances be resolved?
Forecasters spend a lot of time analyzing trends in data for a simple reason. Those trends form the foundation of their projections. And for buyers, the trends in housing prices are alarming. After rising faster than incomes for seven consecutive years, home prices took a sudden and surprising jump upwards across Montana in the wake of the pandemic outbreak, pressing affordability for buyers in some areas to the breaking point. And so the question becomes, what lies ahead?
Montana’s Economy Across the State
There was no escape from the ravages of the COVID-19 recession across the landscape of Montana’s regions in 2020. High-flying areas of the state and more slowly growing areas alike suffered astounding job losses during the spring of that year. Yet the surprise of that sudden and severe downturn has been closely followed by a vigorous economic recovery that contained its own surprises. Among these were superheated housing markets, significant price inflation and a surge in consumer spending.
Where Housing Is Headed
Forecasters spend a lot of time analyzing trends in data for a simple reason: Those trends form the foundation of their projections. And for buyers, the trends in housing prices are alarming. After rising faster than incomes for seven consecutive years, home prices took a sudden and surprising jump upward across Montana in the wake of the pandemic outbreak, pressing affordability for buyers in some areas to the breaking point. So, the question becomes, what lies ahead?
Resolving Montana's Labor Shortage
Demand in the economy in Montana and elsewhere has roared back with unexpected speed from the pandemic declines of 2020. When you combine that surprising growth surge with the reality that public health disruptions in schools, workplaces and logistics remain with us, albeit in different forms, you have an economy that is supply constrained in a significant number of sectors. One of those sectors is the labor market.
Tackling Housing Affordability in Montana
Housing has always been a public policy priority. Governments that cannot put roofs over the heads of their citizens are not judged kindly by either their people or by history. In the United States there are dozens of policies aimed at making it easier for Americans to own or rent housing. These range from national policies, such as the tax deduction of mortgage interest to the provision of subsidized housing in local communities.
The Economic Contributions of Montana Cooperatives
Cooperatives have been part of the fabric of the Montana economy nearly as long as we have been a state. Their footprint is significant in industries that are central to the state’s economy, including agriculture and food processing, banking and credit, electric power distribution and manufacturing. While their presence is most notable in Montana’s rural communities, they are an important economic driver in urban areas as well.
How COVID-19 Has Reshaped the Economy
Cities will still exist next year. So will universities, mass transit, rock concerts and football games. But that’s not to say that the premise of their very existence hasn’t been rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Because the one thing that all of those have in common – bringing people together in close proximity – has been switched from being something good, to being something potentially deadly over most of 2020.
Seeing Beyond the Pandemic’s Grip
COVID-19’s icy grip left no corner of the state’s cities and regions untouched, yet it has unfolded in a way that bears little resemblance to previous economic downturns. A recession that has humbled once thought to be recession proof industries, like health care, while at the same time pumping up demand for housing and durable goods – which generally suffer when economic uncertainty spikes – throws a curve ball at historical patterns of economic vulnerability.
The Economic Impact of COVID-19 in Montana
The unprecedented swift and severe declines in economic activity that have coincided with the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic have not spared Montana. As recently as mid-February, when the Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER) was in the midst of its statewide economic outlook tour, Montana was at full employment and enjoying a third consecutive fiscal year of healthy state revenue growth.
New Study Gauges Hutterite Economic Contributions
This article digests a study of the economic contributions of the Lehrerleut branch of the Hutterite communities in Montana performed by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana (BBER), in partnership with the Montana State University Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics.
Patrick Barkey: Finding good workers and finding the best solution for Montana
Attend almost any gathering of business people and the topic is sure to come up: finding good workers. After more than a decade of economic growth that has featured strong hiring and steadily falling unemployment rates, labor markets across the country and certainly across Montana are tight. For some businesses, the trickle of suitable workers for their openings has shrunk to the point where they are questioning how they can continue to fill orders, let alone capitalize on new opportunities.
Finding Good Workers
Attend almost any gathering of business people and the topic is sure to come up: finding good workers. After more than a decade of economic growth that has featured strong hiring and steadily falling unemployment rates, labor markets across the country and certainly across Montana are tight. For some businesses the trickle of suitable workers for their openings has shrunk to the point where they are questioning how they can continue to fill orders, let alone capitalize on new opportunities.
A Look at Montana's Economy
Rome wasn’t built in a day, it is said. But residents of Gallatin County might be forgiven if they sometimes feel that each day’s passing brings on growth that is visible – a new building shell, a new store opening or a new traffic light. Since recovering the ground it lost in the Great Recession in 2012, the region has grown to become the second largest economy in the state.
Finding Good Workers
Attend almost any gathering of business people and the topic is sure to come up – finding good workers. After more than a decade of economic growth that has featured strong hiring and steadily falling unemployment rates, labor markets across the country and certainly across Montana are tight. For some the supply of suitable workers for their openings has shrunk to the point where they are questioning how they can continue to fill orders, let alone capitalize on new opportunities.
How the Forest Industry Changed the Bitterroot Valley
What would the economy of Ravalli County, Montana, look like today if harvests of timber from its federally owned lands had remained at levels experienced 30 years ago? In one sense, it is a moot question. Timber harvests declined, mills in the region closed and the economy grew in a different direction – changing the past is not a feasible policy option.
Facing the Challenge of Affordable Housing
Housing in general, and home ownership in particular, have always been visible, tangible evidence of economic success. Simply put, economic systems and economic leadership that cannot adequately house their populations are judged as failures. Perhaps that is why the escalating cost of housing in recent years, both in absolute terms and relative to income, has inspired calls to action at the local, state and national level.
Homebuilding in Montana’s Hot Markets
The housing price growth that has pushed the issue of housing affordability to center stage began in earnest around the year 2000. Growth in prices accelerated to average 7.4 percent per year between 2000 and the peak of 2009, more than twice as fast as the 3.5 percent gains per year in median household income over the same period.
Mining, Taxes and Jobs in Montana
What would the economy of the state of Montana look like if the eight largest hard rock mines – producing copper, palladium, gold, talc, cement and other products and materials – did not exist? That was a question posed in a recent study produced by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research. It addressed – both for existing and for proposed new metal mines – the contributions made by hard rock mining to jobs, income, spending, tax receipts and population in the state.
The Future of Colstrip
In July 2016, the owners of Units 1 and 2 of the coal-fired Colstrip Electric Generating Station in Rosebud County, Montana, agreed to shut those units down no later than July 2022. The agreement was reached as a settlement from a lawsuit alleging violations of the Clean Air Act brought by the Montana Environmental Information Center and the Sierra Club in 2013.
2018 Economic Roundtable
For the 43rd year, the Bureau of Business and Economic Research traveled to nine cities across Montana to deliver its annual assessment of economic activity in the state. The 2018 Economic Outlook Seminar covered a wide range of topics from higher education to housing and tourism. We asked some of the presenters in the 2018 program to share their insights on the prospects for some key sectors of the state economy. The State Economy Patrick M.
Montana's Revenue Woes | Montana Business Quarterly
There has always been a lot of confusion in discussions about tax revenues in Helena. More accurately, there is confusion when these discussions circulate outside the political community in our state capital. Most of the confusion centers around language. A spending “cut” in budget speak usually means a lower rate of growth than previously planned.
Wildfire Emissions in Montana
Depression era bank robber Willie Sutton’s reasoning for why he robbed banks was summed up in a famous quote, “Because that’s where the money is.” The same logic helps explain why the Obama administration’s now suspended Clean Power Plan targeted coal-fired electric generating facilities. Of the roughly 5.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted in the U.S. in 2009 to produce energy, more than a third came from the burning of coal (Energy Information Administration, 2011).
2017 Economic Round Table | Montana Business Quarterly
This year, the Bureau of Business and Economic Research traveled to nine cities across Montana to deliver its annual assessment of economic activity in the state. The 2017 Economic Outlook Seminar covered a wide range of sectors and topics from job growth to energy and tourism. In this round table discussion, we highlight some of those topics and industries in an effort to better understand the state’s economic climate. Patrick M.
Economic Contribution of Grizzly Athletics
Intercollegiate athletics play a major role in colleges and universities, individual communities and American culture. At the individual level, participation in intercollegiate athletics by student-athletes represents an opportunity for young men and women to grow, develop and ultimately realize their potential.
The puzzle of the Montana economy
You wouldn’t think that the economy we all live and work in would be such a mystery. Especially in this information age. Yet the state of the state economy — and especially for Montana’s cities and communities — can be frustratingly hard to assess sometimes. And this may be one such time.On the one hand — as economists are famous for saying — we have the sudden and surprising weakness in state government tax receipts.
Assessing the future of coal: Is there a way back up?
The coal business is a different kind of energy business. Unlike crude oil, coal is not a commodity traded freely on global markets. Unlike natural gas, its price is not generally subject to volatility when winters are colder or warmer than expected. And unlike wind and solar power, its consumption is not encouraged by state renewable energy portfolio mandates for power companies or production tax credits for producers.It is the nature of the coal business to evolve more slowly than most.
MT's bumpy road to clean power plan compliance
What would it take for Montana to produce electricity in a way that reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 47 percent? It’s not a hypothetical question. It’s the mandate set for the state in the Environmental Protection Agency’s final version of its Clean Power Plan, released in August 2015.And compliance with that mandate – which requires a larger percentage of CO2 reductions in Montana than any other state – is more than a technological or engineering challenge.
EPA mandate will hurt Montana's economy
What would it take for Montana to produce electricity in a way that reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 47 percent? It’s not a hypothetical question. It’s the mandate set for the state in the Environmental Protection Agency’s final version of its Clean Power Plan, released in August.And compliance with that mandate, which requires a larger percentage of CO2 reductions in Montana than any other state, is more than a technological or engineering challenge.
Guest opinion: What will oil price plunge mean for Montana?
After an election season that featured plenty of frowns about the state of the economy, a different kind of debate has broken out with the sudden plunge in crude oil prices. Will $2-per-gallon gas prices be good for the economy? Or will they be fantastic? Less money being spent by all of us filling up our tanks has given the economy a boost, it is said, with the only squabble being over just how big that boost will be.
Questions we should be asking about oil prices
After an election season that featured plenty of frowns about the state of the economy, a different kind of debate has broken out with the sudden plunge in crude oil prices. Will $2 per gallon gas prices be good for the economy? Or will they be fantastic? Less money being spent by all of us filling up our tanks has given the economy a boost, it is said, with the only squabble being over just how big that boost will be.
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