CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Mountain State Business Index increased 0.2 percent in September, its best overall performance since late 2014.
John Deskins, director of the WVU Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said typically after a big economic downturn, there’s a big rebound, but that wasn’t the case yet.
“In this case, we see stabilizing. We see that the index has flattened out and we see growth for four out of the last six months,” Deskins said. “So that’s certainly a good thing, but we don’t see robust growth happening thus far.”
How long could it be before the Mountain State sees the growth it needs to get back on track?
“It’s probably going to be a while before we see robust growth. We still have a lot of pressures on the economy here in West Virginia,” said Deskins. “Some of those pressures are alleviating to some extent, but there’s still a lot of pressure. So a long time before we see the growth that we want to see.”
Deskins said that there was a bright spot recently for coal, which has been rare for some time.
“Coal actually increased for the last month. Coal was actually a positive contributor to the Mountain State Business Index and we haven’t been able to say that very many times over the last couple years.”
He saw a rebound for coal coming, “although nothing close to the magnitude to where we were just a few years ago.” West Virginia still has a steep hill to climb economically long-term, Deskins said.
“Our long-term challenges are still there and they’re still very daunting. But at least an end to the recession for the short-term is a good thing.”
For September, four components contributed in a positive manner to the overall index, with the largest net improvements coming from coal production and initial unemployment insurance claims.