2001 U.S. Rural New & Expanded Activity

By Pete Julius In order to successfully attract businesses to rural communities, it is imperative to understand which industries gravitate to less populated areas.  For most communities, it is extremely challenging to attract businesses.  For rural communities which...

Capacity Utilization

By Dean Whittaker Capacity utilization is one of the key measures for determining the need for companies to add new capacity. One of the more useful websites for economic development is www.economy.com.  This site offers an abundance of economic indictors and reports...

2002 New and Expanded Facility Announcements

By Jeff Vedders A total of 6,645 new and expanded facility announcements were made in 2002 in the U.S.  This compares with 9,679 announcements in 2001 and 11,602 announcements in 2000.  There was a 31% drop in activity from 2001 to 2002, and a 43% drop in activity...

Plastic Elasticity

By Pete Julius For many years, the plastics industry has shown up near the top of just about every new and expanded analysis that we conducted.  Then the industry seemed to all but disappear.  The chart below provides a four-year insight into the number of new and...