New economic recovery dashboard in Missouri

A press release posted Missouri Department of Economic Development detailed Gov. Parson’s announcement of a new dashboard made available to Missourians that will help track the economic recovery of the state.

“In the economy, we’re starting to see early signs of recovery,” Director for Economic Development Rob Dixon said in the news release. “Data driven decision making is a core value of our department and it is crucial that other leaders use this data to revitalize our economy and get Missourians back to work.”

The dashboard has been named The Show Me Strong Economic Recovery Dashboard, and tracks metrics across multiple categories impacting businesses, communities and citizens.

The release went on to list early signs of recovery, showing the below points:

• Continued unemployment claims have fallen from a peak of more than 440,234 to just over 350,490.
• At the worst point this spring, Missourians employed hourly by small businesses such as restaurants and retailers worked only about 50 percent of the hours that they worked in January. The most recent data shows improvement, witha 22.9 percent decline from January levels as of May 29.
• At the end of April one survey showed only 5 percent of small businesses were seeing increases in revenue. The latest data has climbed to more than 15 percent.
• At its lowest point, credit and debit card consumer spending had fallen by roughly 35.2 percent since January. The latest data shows we’ve returned to within 5 percent of January levels.

The data collected so far shows strong upticks in job postings in some of the hardest hit industries like leisure and hospitality, according to the release.