Despite Missoula's vigorous expansion in the past two decades, the Garden City is slipping in several important categories, Swanson told the city's business community.
To put it bluntly, Missoula has become a growing center of commerce with a highly educated workforce, but it has notably low wages and high poverty rates. This scenario means Missoula, for all its amenities and allure, is trailing Bozeman, Billings, Great Falls and Helena in terms of economic health and the degree to which we are improving.
Joining us on that list are Gallup, N.M.; Muskogee, Okla.; Corvallis, Ore., and Stillwater, Okla.
The U.S. Census data make for a strange pairing with other data, said Swanson, director of the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.
Although Missoula is among the fastest-growing communities - it experienced a 40 percent increase in employment growth from 1990-2000 - when it comes to per-capita income levels, we fall in the middle of the pack among peer cities.
Missoula's average per capita annual income is $31,851 - significantly below Casper, Wyo.'s $49,000, Helena's $34,664, Bozeman's $34,250 and Great Falls' $32,638.
As for median household income, Missoula falls to near the bottom of the list, with $40,396 compared to the best-ranked places like Bend, Ore., which has a median household income of about $53,000, and Bozeman, at $47,900.
Missoula ranks among the top seven communities with a college-educated population - 32 percent of us. And just 6.8 percent of us don't have a high school diploma, which puts Missoula again at the top of the best-educated communities.
So what do these numbers mean?
To an economist, they translate into two words: significant concern.
"We have a lot of work ahead of us," Swanson said. "When we talk about economic positioning, we are looking at how do we take this growth and make it better?"
"If, as a community, we are not doing economic positioning, we are simply taking the growth - we are riding it," he said. "What this data tells me is that we aren't working with it, and by that I mean we aren't working with the areas of growth in our economy and advancing our workforce."
To that end, Swanson is urging city leaders, businesses owners and concerned citizens to pull together and create an economic roundtable.
Clustering our "economic subsectors" is one way to do it, Swanson said.
When the data of who we are is clumped by themes, a clearer picture emerges.
Between 2001 and 2007, the fastest-growing sector of Missoula's economy was in the category of professional, business and financial services, which grew by $123 million in the six-year period.
The next largest contributors to the economy are federal and state government and health care, both of which grew by $65 million between 2001 and 2007.
Following the big three are retail and wholesale trade ($49 million); hotels/restaurants/arts/entertainment/recreation
($39 million); local government ($25 million); construction and real estate ($19 million), and farming and agricultural services ($4 million).
Embracing the thriving areas of our economy allows us to build upon them, and also to shore up our weaknesses, Swanson said.
The work is critical, because if we don't attend to these matters, Missoula will chug along as it has been, but it won't flourish.
Our poverty numbers tell us so, Swanson said.
"Any time poverty numbers come up to double digits," he said, "and there is increasing poverty in a growing economy - that's a sign of failure."
Reducing poverty in Missoula, and improving salaries and household incomes should be a priority for all of the city, especially the business community, Swanson said.
"If we are going to have growth and make our economy work better, we need a broad-based work force that has the opportunity to move forward, to receive ongoing education to move up the ladder - and that doesn't necessarily mean more two-year and four-year degree programs," he said. "It means businesses investing in their workforce with ongoing training opportunities that apply directly to their jobs."
A better-trained, better-paid work force translates into a workforce that is invested in the community. It also means a healthier community that builds upon opportunity.
"One of the things about this is that a lot of people in positions of authority sort of think we as a community are already working to improve these things, but because we all work in our own boxes, we aren't working on this together," Swanson said. "We have to mix it up if we are going to reimagine and rethink how these issues can be addressed and how we get things done differently."
Holding on to past models won't work.
Missoula's economy is changing, and Montana's demographics are changing, too.
"I think we are stuck in how we think about ourselves, and we are stuck where we were 20 years ago when we were a natural resources-based economy," Swanson said. "We aren't recognizing that cities have become the dominant asset and the dominant engine for economic change, growth and advancement in Montana.
"We neglect these cities, the very engines of economic advancement, and most of the people who live in this state live within 50 miles of our cities," he said.
"Missoula is one of those cities, and we need to really think hard about our future and what we want to be known for - what we want to be proud of."