Economic state of Missoula is
better than we think - Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2003
SUMMARY: Old habits make us tell
ourselves we're at the bottom of just about every economic
list. But our economy has a lot more going for it than we
think.
Sometimes we Montanans set ourselves up to stand
in the back row. We tell ourselves the same negative stories
so many times that we believe them to the exclusion of all
others. There's no exception when it comes to talking about
our economy.
On Monday at the Missoula Area Economic
Forum, Center for the Rocky Mountain West economist Larry
Swanson argued convincingly that we've got to
stop.
What we tell ourselves is we're poor, it's
getting worse, everybody else makes more money than we do,
we'll never be OK again until we get logging and mining back.
We have nothing going for us.
In truth, we live in a
region where personal income is up, the number of jobs is up
and taxes in real dollars are only 7.8 percent of our incomes,
slightly down. In the 1990s, at least 57,000 new people joined
us, many of them bringing outside income and resources. We
have tremendous growth and vitality.
We fall into our
old trap by looking at "Montana" as an economy. There is no
"Montana economy," Swanson argues. The state has three regions
so disparate that lumping them together presents a false
picture of all of them. It's a gloomy one, in which we lead
the bottom of lists in incomes, teachers' salaries and, as the
governor is fond of saying, "good-paying jobs."
What
has happened in Montana is growth and economic development in
the mountain region of western Montana - 21 counties - and the
same in the state's urban centers. Eighty percent to 90
percent of the economic growth in the past decade has been in
these seven centers, the cities and their surrounding areas.
Growth in population, personal income and employment has been
greatest in Missoula and Billings. Employment has grown
stoutly in the Bozeman and Kalispell areas, grown some in the
Helena area and grown a little in the Great Falls and Butte
regions.
During the 1990s, growth in the seven regional
centers and the counties linked closely with them accounted
for 96 percent of all the income growth in the state. And
total employment in the centers grew by 92,000 jobs and by
28,000 jobs in the closely connected counties. The entire rest
of the state grew by only 5,700 jobs.
We are determined
to be negative about our change to a services economy. We
think "services," and we think everybody works as convenience
store clerks for minimum wage. But services, which have seen
the blast of economic growth in the Rocky Mountain region in
the past decade, mean real estate, insurance, stockbrokers,
engineering, auto dealers and services, doctors and nurses,
wholesalers, building contractors and restaurant owners. In
Missoula County between 1990 and 2000, the business of health
care grew a whopping 72 percent, or just more than $100
million. These services need an urban environment to develop
and prosper.
Our growth spurt will level off. If we are
merely reactive, the mopey Eeyores of "Winnie the Pooh" books,
we won't harness the change for the lasting good. We will be,
as Swanson puts it, looking at the future through the
rear-view mirror and wondering what that was that blew
through.
