An Iowa Policy Project report issued this Labor Day weekend is titled “Tough Times in the Heartland.” Researcher Colin Gordon, co-author of the 2009 “State of Working Iowa” report, says Iowa has escaped some of the hardest hits of the national recession.
Iowa home values weren’t as high and didn’t tumble as low. Plus, the state has a smaller stake in the automobile industry compared to states like Michigan and Ohio.
“Despite that sort of relative insulation, I think the news is pretty dismal,” he says. “We’ve lost almost all the job gains from our last recovery in 2005. We’ve lost 46,000 jobs since December, 2007 alone and given the fact that our labor force continues to grow, we now have a job gap that’s over 60,000.” [click to continue…]
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