The Mercatus Center at George Mason University issued their 2018 rankings of states by fiscal condition. You can find the North Dakota discussion here. As a point of reference North Dakota was ranked in the top 5 each of the previous three years. The current ranking puts the state squarely in the average category.
Continue reading State Fiscal Rankings-ND #19
I really really want to read the USMCA trade deal. I realize I am one of the few that does, but the fact is that North Dakota is a state that looked to lose a great deal from the trade war since this state had the highest per capita trade surplus with China, Mexico, and Canada. But I cannot find a full version of the agreement in a single PDF, only each individual section. This makes text searching for my key terms almost impossible. But then I sit back and realize that the document is not yet available in Spanish and I say, maybe my convenience is not the biggest deal. There is a whole country that is part of the deal that cannot get the document in their native language right now, just in English, from the US Trade Representative’s website. I mean Article 34 Section 8 says, “The English, French, and Spanish texts of this Agreement are equally authentic.” It says nothing about their existence I suppose.
Continue reading USMCA and ND
As part of my construction of a population projection for North Dakota my reading and data analysis focused significantly on demographic data and trends in North Dakota. One of my concerns with trends in North Dakota is that with a low population base even moderate flows will lead to rate changes and possible adjustments in trends. The other issue for North Dakota is that the proximity to a larger neighbor in Minnesota can somewhat complicate the analysis. For example, this graph.
Continue reading Migration in and out of North Dakota
Numerous callers over the past few weeks mentioned that age increases are not really keeping pace with inflation. This is something mentioned significantly at the national level too. As a result I used the CPI to adjust the wage data from the post last (found here) week about wage comparisons to get a sense of the curve shapes after the adjustment. I put them all in terms of 200Q4 level. The adjustment is the same for the different regions so there is not added value in the comparison of the different regions really, it is more the comparison of the nominal and real values.
The radio audience really responded to the topics of income and wages the last few weeks. Along with the population posts (which I confess I find more interesting) I include another look at wages. I grabbed the data for goods producing and service providing jobs in three North Dakota counties: Cass, Grand Forks, and Williams. Nothing necessarily scientific about the county selection, just three that I know and that will likely give us something to ponder.