Cities with high construction productivity, driven by flexible regulations, strong logistics networks, good weather and a growing population, offer businesses an attractive environment for expansion.
Many of 2025’s economic challenges are expected to persist in 2026, and some Extended Metropolitan Areas will be more resilient to headwinds than others. Find out which EMA economies the American Growth Project expects will expand the most.
Want to know which issues are top of mind for business leaders as we enter 2026? Chief Economist Gerald Cohen gives you the big questions for the new year in his annual Five Trends.
As businesses increasingly rely on technology, cities with a strong tech workforce gain a competitive edge, experiencing greater economic growth. This shift can be seen in both urban centers and rural areas.
Kenan Institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen and Empowering American Cities, the institute's collaboration with Fifth Third Bank, are featured in a new USA Today package about cities with growing economies.
New business formation fuels local growth in North Carolina and offers real-time data to guide policy and forecasting, according to new research from the Kenan Institute, the North Carolina Collaboratory, and the Secretary of State.
The Kenan Institute's projected 2025 GDP growth rates for 150 Extended Metropolitan Areas across the United States anticipate a slowdown, but our data indicate that all of those areas will see GDP growth this year.
We update an August 2023 piece in which we explain why manufacturing remains essential for economic growth and how manufacturing in the US today incorporates both regional shifts and “stickiness” in traditional strongholds.
Kenan Institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen kicks off 2025 with a rundown of five issues that will be top of mind for business leaders and policymakers, accompanied by his analysis.
To attract skilled talent in an evolving economic landscape, public and private sector leaders must understand the factors – economic, social and political conditions – that push and pull people and drive relocation.
To find signs of productivity, we must first know where to look. Chief Economist Gerald Cohen describes how an area’s industry mix is key to its productivity and how adjusting that mix can drive more local growth using data from our American Growth Project.
The Kenan Institute's projected 2024 GDP growth rates for 150 microeconomies across the United States anticipate a slowdown, with almost all our 150 Extended Metropolitan Areas experiencing a deceleration.
The year ahead is full of economic uncertainty, but institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen knows that some topics will be in the thoughts of many business leaders and policymakers. Find out five trends he has in mind.
The American Growth Project explains why manufacturing remains essential for economic growth and how manufacturing in the U.S. today incorporates both regional shifts and “stickiness” in traditional strongholds.
Chief Economist Gerald Cohen outlines mid-year updates to our 2023 economic forecasts, discussing which EMAs have changed since our January projections.
With economic growth can come growing pains, such as an increased cost of living and displacement of local businesses. An NCGrowth report examines how communities with a large manufacturer can minimize those pains.
Our American Growth Project examination of skills in the workforce begins with a discussion of why skills are difficult to measure, then moves to a broad look at two ways to estimate the skill level across our Extended Metropolitan Areas.
Soon after releasing the American Growth Project’s February report on projected economic growth for U.S. midsize cities, we realized several places near the top of our rankings featured prominently in songs. Naturally, a playlist was born.
In kicking off the new year, we at the Kenan Institute want to highlight five topics we anticipate will be top of mind for business leaders and policymakers during the 12 months ahead.
Kenan Institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen discusses the power of productivity and what that means for the U.S. economy.
The new report from the Kenan Institute's American Growth Project takes a look under the hood at productivity - and which U.S. cities have been climbing up the productivity rankings.
The United States may be a highly productive society as a whole, but regionally results vary widely. Institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen discusses the success stories and trends identified from our American Growth Project study of the top producing cities.
Kenan Institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen explains the vital importance of productivity to the health of our economy, both domestically and globally, and why that is only one metric of societal health.
The institute’s first American Growth Project report suggests that downtown San Francisco had to take a major hit from the shift to working from home so that its surrounding metro area could thrive, Fortune's Prarthana Prakash writes.
In its Changing America section, The Hill explored the institute’s American Growth Project and the variables driving the rankings of the fastest-growing U.S. cities, as well as the outlook for the future.
Institute Executive Director Greg Brown told Axios that the U.S. cities with the fastest-growing economies are undergoing a transformation. "It's going to be a big change over the next few years,” he said.
How the U.S. is experiencing inflation shows considerable variation from place to place.
A new, data-driven method of looking at regional economies in more detail will enable a richer discussion of the U.S. economy as a whole and provide forecasts for decision-makers in business and government.
COVID-19 and the subsequent rise in work-from-home policies by firms have changed the landscape of skilled labor in the United States. The Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes finds that 15% of employees are working from home full time, as of September 2022. This dramatic increase in remote work has led to an equally dramatic physical migration of workers across the U.S. Census data shows a sharp decline in populations of the largest U.S. cities and increases among midsize cities and smaller metro areas. For example, from 2020 to 2021, the counties of Manhattan (New York County) and San Francisco both saw a decline in their population of 25- to 54-year-olds by nearly 10%.
North Carolina’s 100 counties have experienced an uneven pattern of growth and development over the past decade or so, even during the pandemic, when the state was a magnet for migration. At one end, metropolitan and amenity-rich counties captured most of the growth between April 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021; at the other, 21 counties experienced net out-migration. Given these disparities, the Urban Investment Strategies Center offers an approach using targeted economic development strategies.
Last month our home state of North Carolina was named “America’s Top State for Business” by CNBC (see the full ranking here). It wasn’t long after when some commentators pointed out that Oxfam had recently ranked N.C. as the worst state for workers. The extreme juxtaposition of rankings made me wonder if this was a coincidence or if there are systematic factors that make states good for businesses and bad for workers. Perhaps “right-to-work” laws, lax worker protection regulation or regional wage differences attract businesses looking to take advantage of areas with weak labor bargaining power. This in turn leads to business growth and thus job migration to states that are less desirable for individual workers. At the end of the day, economic planning should have the best interest of residents in mind when crafting business policy, so it seems worth unpacking what drives the rankings.
As venture capital markets have surged in recent years, early access to capital remains highly localized. We examine changes that can help investors connect with underrepresented entrepreneurs outside traditional funding hubs, from innovative organizations to improvements in transportation.
Female involvement in the workforce remains important to the U.S. economy, but COVID-19 has only exacerbated a drop in participation rates. To reverse the trend, businesses are enhancing maternity leave, child care services and access to fertility and family-planning services, according to research by UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School experts.
“Every business I enter is looking for employees” was a common refrain in our Carolina Across 100 survey, with 79% of the total survey sample selecting employment/staffing concerns among their top three negative impacts of COVID-19 on their organization. Is the staffing shortage just a function of COVID-19 that will correct itself as COVID abates or are there larger demographic and economic forces at work? The answer is a bit of both.
When high-tech companies plan to expand, U.S. cities often compete to attract their investment. While living near a new corporate neighbor can bring job creation and an economic boost, these benefits aren’t experienced equally by local inhabitants. This week's insight explores this and other key findings in new research by UNC Kenan-Flagler Professor Franklin Qian and economist Rose Tan.
As the pandemic forced shutdowns across the globe, U.S. government entities at the federal, state and local levels worked swiftly to secure known drivers of economic growth and job creation – including entrepreneurial ecosystems and small businesses. And while the programs implemented were widely lauded as successful, the story of who benefitted – and who did not – is more complex. This week’s Kenan Insight explores our experts’ key findings around the roles of policy and implementation in supporting equal access to opportunity.
Could new legislation help drive the development of local tech clusters – and the growth of corresponding economic power and development – beyond Silicon Valley? In this week’s Kenan Insight, our experts explore the gravitational pull of Big Tech along with what it could mean if startups across the U.S. were better able to remain and grow in the communities where they launch.
While the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating for many, research shows its impact was not felt equally. Black Americans experienced disproportionate health and economic ramifications, which compounded the financial, social and psychological strain many felt pre-pandemic, and have contributed to growing inter-generational wealth disparities. In today’s Kenan Insight, our experts explore whether the multi-trillion dollar “Build Back Better” plan proposed by the Biden administration holds the potential to begin closing pervasive gaps in American society.
The COVID-19 pandemic increased economic inequities in a number of ways, including in access to external capital – and while 2020 marked a break-out year for venture-backed firms, the pandemic hit many main street businesses hard. In this Kenan Insight, we explore the forces driving the haves and have-nots in this new economic climate, as well as actionable policy solutions as government support programs wind down.
The widespread adoption of technological advances has made the move to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic a success. In this Kenan Insight, we look at why the switch was such a win, its impact on worker productivity, and what it means in the long term for workers, office spaces and cities.
During the past 40 years, the income gap between top and bottom earners has expanded exponentially, with the top 1% controlling about 20% of national income and the bottom 50% holding less than 13%. In this Kenan Insight, we examine the role of two factors contributing to regional inequalities in the U.S and Europe: job automation and telecommuting.
As we approach the one-year mark of state-issued stay-at-home orders, the short- and long-term impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on state coffers is still being assessed. With businesses forced to close and unemployment at near-record levels, state policymakers are scrambling to find ways to make up for lost tax revenue. In this Kenan Insight, we look at both the challenges and opportunities for balancing state budgets in light of this new economic reality.
2020 brought an end to North Carolina’s decade-long economic expansion that began in 2010 after the Great Recession. It has now been a year since COVID-19 arrived on U.S. shores, and we can see some changes clearly, while others are just starting to emerge from the haze. It will likely be years before we fully grasp the myriad ways COVID-19 has affected the nation’s and the state’s economies. Now seems like a good time to take stock of the fallout from 2020, the trends we’re seeing a year into the crisis and where things are starting to turn around for North Carolina.
American Indian communities face a growing housing crisis, compounding long-standing social and economic challenges. In this Kenan Insight, we examine the structural and historic factors that underlie the current lack of affordable housing, and identify several promising options for both addressing the immediate crisis and improving the broader economic situation for tribal communities.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Within two months, nearly half a million people fled hard-hit New York City. Will they return once the crisis has passed? In this Kenan Insight, we explore how the ongoing pandemic is raising questions about the future attractiveness of large cities as places to live and do business.
Governors across the United States have reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing state-level executive actions to address a range of issues provoked by the crisis. Although it is too early to gauge the long-term effects of the pandemic and states’ responses to it, this Kenan Insight provides a preliminary analysis of actions governors have taken thus far, to help inform policymaking going forward.
The coronavirus pandemic has been especially traumatic on our country’s African American working poor. From being disproportionately concentrated in low-wage hospitality and service sector jobs to struggling with caregiving and food insecurity issues due to shuttered daycare facilities and food banks, working-poor African Americans are facing an inequitable share of financial, social and psychological challenges. What can be done to ease the burdens of working-poor African Americans, both during the pandemic and moving forward? In this Kenan Insight, Urban Investment Strategies Center Director and William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship Jim Johnson invokes a little-known federal program, the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission (SCRC), as part of a strategic response to providing a coherent, place-based development plan.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put 18 million jobs at small businesses in the U.S. at risk – which could as much as quadruple the nation’s total unemployment rate. The effects of both the coronavirus and recent government relief programs were explored by a panel of Kenan Institute-convened experts during a press briefing held yesterday. The full recording of this briefing—along with a deeper-dive analysis on the specific implications of the financial downturn on small business employment by Kenan Institute Research Director Professor Christian Lundblad and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Professor Paige Ouimet—is available in this week’s Kenan Insight.