This Labor Day, West Virginians have growing economic concerns.
According to the most recent edition of the MetroNews West Virginia Poll, 29% of respondents say the economy is improving, 37% say it’s about the same and 35% say it is getting worse.
That’s a shift from last year when 30% perceived economic improvement and 26% thought it was worsening.
Two years ago, 44% thought the economy was getting better and 19% perceived it as worsening.
“The one red flag issue that we found in this poll was concern about the economy,” said Rex Repass, Repass, chief consultant for Research America, which conducts the West Virginia Poll sponsored by the High Technology Foundation.
“There is growing concern over the economy, and that is part of the national issues with the whole trade war that’s going on, feeling the crunch at the grocery store — but there is growing concern about the economy in the state.”
The proportion of people who believe West Virginia is going in the right direction is about half and half.
Fifty percent of poll respondents said the state is heading in the right direction. About the same number said it’s going in the wrong direction.
That demonstrates a little more optimism from last year when 56% of respondents described the state as going the wrong way with just 44% saying West Virginia is going the right way.
The West Virginia Poll asked several more questions about views on economic issues:
- 73% say state government should spend more time on economic issues than social issues. Ten percent disagree and the rest say they’re not sure.
- 66% say state government should reduce taxes on businesses to create more jobs in the state. Eleven percent disagree, with the remainder unsure.
- 40% say “people like me have more confidence in big business than in big labor unions,” while 30% disagree and 30% are not sure.
Repass described “an underlying latent concern about the economy in the state, and people wondering what’s next and how are tariffs going to affect me.
“We know groceries are more expensive, and that’s just uncertainty. So that uncertainty that we saw last year and the previous year and the previous year is growing, and that’s a warning sign, I think, for political leadership in the state.”
West Virginia’s real gross state product in 2024 was about $83.7 billion, a figure that represents the total value of goods and services produced in the state, adjusted for inflation. That was a 3.5% increase from the previous year. Per person, West Virginia’s productivity ranked among the lowest in the country.
West Virginia’s unemployment rate was 3.7% as of July, about the same as it has been in recent months or slightly better. Nationally, the unemployment rate has been 4.1 percent.
While employment in West Virginia saw a small increase of 429 jobs in July, employment fell by 4,460 over the previous 12 months, a figure that the West Virginia Chamber recently spotlighted as troubling.
West Virginia’s labor statistics show a persistently low labor force participation rate, ranking at the very bottom of national figures, with a July 2025 rate of 54.3%.
COMMENTARY BY T.J. MEADOWS: WV’s business leaders want action
“We always are looking for more and more jobs and opportunities for people,” Gov. Patrick Morrisey said last week on Watchdog Radio in Wheeling.
“I think that the biggest thing that gets lost is that in order to really skyrocket up from a jobs perspective, you have to do the fundamentals the right way, and so that’s what we’ve been working on over the last seven months, whether it’s identifying the sites that are ready to build, the water, the sewer, creating a really dynamic regulatory environment where we’re stopping the red tape, making things so much easier to work.”