Mid-Missouri Business Week: Columbia economy growing at faster rate than U.S.

Since 2000, Columbia’s economy has been growing at a faster rate than the U.S., according to a report from Dr. Joseph Haslag, an economics professor at Mizzou.

Haslag studied Missouri’s four main metropolitan areas: Kansas City, St. Louis, Columbia and St. Joseph. Columbia was the only one with this exceptional rate.

Missouri as a whole, on the other hand, has been behind.

“What we’ve seen since the mid-nineties is that there’s been a separation,” Haslag said. “The U.S. has been growing at a much faster rate than the Missouri economy has been growing.”

Haslag said that groups like the University of Missouri and Veterans United in Columbia help keep the economic growth up. In the last decade, Veterans United accounted for 20 percent of Columbia’s employment growth.

“University towns, when they work well, they spawn off ideas,” Haslag said. “They spawn off students who leave and they go out and they’re entreprenuerial and they experiment and they come up with business models that work.”

For Haslag’s full report, click here.

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