As presented in Table 1, only South Dakota and Utah benefited from a bull economy with job and wage growth exceeding that of the US for 1999. Iowa, Oklahoma and Wyoming performed better than the US in job growth, but lagged in terms of wage growth. Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska outstripped the US in wage growth, but trailed the US in job growth. Source US BLS Beginning in September 1994, supported by a grant from Norwest Bank of Nebraska , Creighton University surveys monthly over 1,100 purchasing managers in the twelve states listed in Table 1. 1 Figure 1 compares monthly PMIs for the Mid-American Region, the Mountain States region and the US over the past six months.
Data show that the PMIs for all three survey areas have been trending upward recently.
These leading economic indicators predict that economic growth for the second half of 1999, compared to the first half of the year, will be slightly higher for the Mid-American region and for the Mountain States region. However, this slight improve is produced by much better economic prospects in Missouri, Nebraska, and Arkansas in the Mid-American region and Utah in the Mountain States region. All other states are expected to slow over the coming months. Past tight labor market conditions, in addition to reducing job growth, also increased inflationary pressures as the regional price indices rose over the past six months from 43.6 to 59.6 in the Mid-American region and from 53.6 to 65.1 in the Mountain States region. Figure 2 compares price indices for the three survey areas over the past six months.