As manufacturing activity shrinks and relocates, large cities of the Midwest look to another staple of their economic base, business and professional services. Large cities everywhere typically serve as centers of finance, communication, governance, and varied business services. In the Midwest, business service specializations in cities originally derived from goods production, as surroun... Read More

Last fall, we made available our first ever website devoted to understanding and analyzing the Seventh District economy. This month, we have revised our website, adding new features and making it easier to use. As you first view our new home page, you will see a convenient navigation bar with five major choices, organized under tabs. First and most prominently, the “features” appe... Read More

Manufacturing activity holds an outsized importance in the economy of the Midwest. The Midwest regional economy derives approximately 53 percent more than the national average of personal income from manufacturing. The map below illustrates the relative share of payroll employment in manufacturing across U.S. states. 1. Manufacturing share of total employment, 200... Read More

Looking west from Ohio to Iowa and Minnesota, there is a distinct falloff in economic growth, at least according to recent reports on payroll employoment. With only a three-week lag, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports their estimates of payroll employment monthly for individual states. The reported monthly figures for June 2006, now complete the second quarter of this year. Th... Read More

Honda recently decided on a site in Indiana for its new North American auto assembly plant over sites in Ohio and Illinois. Indiana offered Honda generous incentives of EDGE tax credits, training assistance, and real and personal property tax abatements totaling up to $41.5 million. In addition, the state will provide infrastructure support for water, wastewater, and road improvements of ... Read More

These days, there is some concern over rising income inequality among workers and households in the United States, especially slow wage growth at the bottom of the income distribution. In contrast, from a longer-term perspective, America's general experience with household well-being has been strongly positive—both across time and geographically. Over the 20th century, household incomes h... Read More

If current trends continue, manufacturing activity will soon become extinct as a part of central city economies. The reasons for this exodus are largely the result of shifts in the technology of many types of production activity. Central cities—especially in the Midwest and Northeast—are generally densely populated and somewhat congested. Such conditions are not ideal for production activ... Read More

Honda has announced its intention to build another U.S. auto assembly plant, this one in Greensburg, Indiana, 50 miles southeast of Indianapolis (see map below). Unlike many recent assembly plant openings by foreign-domiciled automotive companies, Honda sited its plant in the Midwest rather than in a southern state. Does this announcement denote the end of the southward movement of auto s... Read More

Lately, the Chicago business press has lamented the region's loss of large company headquarters—for example, those of Amoco, Arthur Andersen, Borg-Warner, Quaker, Searle, and Zenith. The chart below numerically depicts the source of this local concern: The Chicago area is down 19 headquarters over the period from 1975 to 2005 as measured by Fortune magazine's list of the largest nonfinanc... Read More

Transportation of goods and materials seems to be as important as ever in the U.S. economy. Rising personal income in the U.S. begets greater demand for goods, and these goods must be transported from their place of production to the places where households consume them. In addition, as global trade has expanded, goods are purchased and transported from afar to an ever greater extent. Mea... Read More