The unemployment rate for Kansas, as a whole, decreased from March 2018 to April. The Wichita, Topeka, Manhattan and Lawrence MSAs also saw an unemployment rate decrease.

A slide presentation is available with additional employment and unemployment data for Kansas and its four metro areas.

View the April slide presentation.

Overall Kansas manufacturing employment has declined in recent years, most recently decreasing by 900 jobs in the 2016 year and 1,600 jobs for 2017. The highest level for manufacturing jobs over the past decade was in 2008 which was 185,300, which was also a 700 job increase from the 184,700 jobs in 2007

Since 2014 there has been a decrease of manufacturing jobs each year, leading to 158,800 jobs for 2017.

Read the Full Industry Analysis

The unemployment rate for Kansas, as a whole, decreased from November 2017 to December 2017. The Wichita, Topeka, Manhattan and Lawrence MSAs also saw an unemployment rate decrease.

A slide presentation is available with additional employment and unemployment data for Kansas and its four metro areas.

View the December slide presentation.

Retail sales and professional and business services are an important part of the local economies of every county throughout Kansas. CEDBR has updated its service and retail gap analysis for every county in Kansas, comparing the retail sales and employment, as well as sales and employment of the professional, scientific, technical, and other services sectors in each county to their peer counties in Kansas.

Read the Services Analysis Summary.

Read the Retail Analysis Summary.

The contestants in CEDBR’s S&P 500 Prediction Challenge each gave a prediction for the value of the S&P 500 stock market index on August 31^st, 2018.  As of November 5^th, the closing date for entries into the Challenge, the S&P 500 index was valued at 2,587.  The median prediction among the contestants for the S&P 500 Index is 2,663.58 points.  On average, contestants predicted that the S&P 500 will increase by 3 percent over the next ten months, after the index increased by 14.6 percent this year to date.

Approximately 60 percent of the contestants predicted that the stock market would increase in 2018 over its November 2017 value.  Many of their predictions were more bullish than major analysts forecast for 2018.  Recently, analysts at Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup forecast the S&P 500 to reach 2,500 points, 2,600 points, and 2,675 points, respectively, in 2018. The Federal Reserve Board has forecast continued economic growth in 2018, with modest inflationary expectations and a half point increase in the Federal Funds rate projected.

See results at www.KansasEconomy.org. 

The U.S. Census Bureau has published their population projections for the entire United States from 2015 to 2060 , and they project that the United States population will grow from 321.4 million to 416.8 million in that period. This represents 29.6 percent growth for the U.S. population, which is projected to expand more rapidly than the Kansas population.

Both the Kansas and the U.S. populations are projected to have positive growth rates throughout this period, with growth generally slowing over much of this period as well.

Read the complete article.