Human Capital

Our Most Dynamic Metropolitan Index, and the analysis contained in this report provides objective insight into the communities providing economic opportunity for their residents, separating high performers from the low. Most Dynamic Metropolitans provides fact-based metrics on near-term and medium-term performance and prospects for long-term growth.

Main Street America—and its small towns—is a central component to understanding the economic forces at work across the United States. Dotting the U.S. map—in the Heartland¹ and beyond—are 531 small towns, better known as micropolitan statistical areas, which comprise of one or more counties with at least one city with more than 10,000 but less than 50,000 in population.

Heartland States Lag Behind Coastal States in the Innovation Economy

Trade and tariffs with China cause economic hardship on America’s Heartland Economy – counties and crops across the Heartland are affected most.

For more than half a century the U.S. has maintained a competitive edge in the world economy in large measure because of its leadership in research and innovation. To assume that this will continue without change is naive.

The American research university is the nation’s best defense against economic competition from the rest of the world. Research shouldn’t be confined to a library, lab, or lecture hall. When it comes to America’s research universities, across the Heartland and beyond, data show that when universities and communities collaborate, the positive impacts on the workforce, tax base, startup activity and economy opportunity grow exponentially.

5G, the fifth generation of wireless communications, has the potential to make the opportunity cost of rural living much larger, maybe insurmountably so.

A Heartland Start-up Spotlight on Krystal Beachum’s Student-Athletes Unite.

Smaller locales are not necessarily known for their economic dynamism. Nonetheless, cluster attributes exist through thoughtful guidance. The five communities’ economic successes were not the result of random, serendipitous events.

The State of the Heartland: Factbook 2018 benchmarks the performance of the 19-state American “Heartland” on 26 socioeconomic measures and is intended to help Heartland leaders and citizens better comprehend the region’s current trajectory at a time of rapid economic and social change.