by Sundar Raman on 31 May 2009
Tags: economy, employment
Iowa job losses, Des Moines Register
The Des Moines Register has a series of interesting statistics (images and info) relating to the current state of job losses in Iowa, and how they relate to historical job and population trends in Iowa. The fact that Iowa has a pretty stable (and in some cases a negative) population growth is something I had paid little/no attention to.
The article states that Iowa is going to be adding 20,000 new jobs next year at least partially thanks to the stimulus bill, but there’s a bigger concern at the core of the job losses. Iowa’s population is correspondingly declining:
The brain drain is a longtime problem for Iowa. The state ranks second-worst in the nation — behind only North Dakota — for its out-migration of college-educated workers, U.S. Census data show.
The one seeming glimmer in this is apparently entrepreneurship:
“Entrepreneurship is up tremendously,” said Merrick, who added that the state divided $2.5 million among 18 business startups that seek to commercialize new technology. The state has a waiting list of 30 companies seeking funding.
I’m curious what sectors entrepreneurship is up in, and what they’re seeking funding for.
About the author:
Sundar Raman - who has written 42 articles on Fairfield Voice.
It's only fair that I say a bit about myself before I force the world to share in my deepest (darkest?) insights I guess, so here goes.
I'm a Fairfield native. Not by birth, but having been here for just about 20 years I think I can consider myself about as committed to this community as anyone out there.
I'm an Open Source advocate. This means that I have long, drawn out debates about the merits of transparency that make for very awkward dinner conversations with my more corporate friends and relatives.
I'm opinionated about most things. I'm more opinionated about things that I know absolutely nothing about than those that I know something about. I'm sure that says a lot about me to the psycho-analysts out there. (Instructions to readers of my posts: 1. procure a sizeable hunk of Himalayan Pink Salt; 2. place HPS next to computer; 3. read blog sentence; 4. lick HPS; 5. repeat steps 3-5. )
I love politics, food, travel, nature, photography, art and technology. Not in any particular order, and the more deviant and unconventional these are, the better!
So now that you know me, let's get it on ...
I wonder if those numbers include former 3mix developer Collin Miller, and soon, Quinn Shanahan (both migrating to NYC for work)?
Looking into population trends I ran into Trinifar's Population Size Matters post, which has a LOT more interesting information about global population fluctuations and what's looming in the future.
Google's public data also is pretty interesting to play with to <a href="http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=uspopulation&met=population&idim=state:19000&q=iowa+population+trends#met=population&idim=state:19000:17000:55000:31000">compare stats between states.
I'm going to have to write more about Google Public Data at some point. I have a ridiculous amount of fun looking at stats and variances.