Continuing high unemployment rates, weak economic growth, and stock market volatility are all contributing to concern and uncertainty about the national economy. But how’s Oklahoma faring in these turbulent times? I recently spoke with Chad Wilkerson, the Oklahoma City Branch Executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City about conditions in the Sooner State. This is an edited and abridged transcript of our conversation on August 24, 2011.

David Blatt: How would you characterize the current state of Oklahoma’s economy?

Chad Wilkerson: I would say things are still pretty solid for us. We’ve had fairly solid job growth over the past year. Unemployment’s down to 5.5 percent, and in some parts of the state… it’s less than 5 percent.

However, I think that measure may be overstating the degree to which we’ve recovered from the recent recession. There’s been a fairly sizable number of people drop out of the labor force in the last couple of years. This has been interesting me of late because of the fact that Oklahoma’s unemployment rates are down to a level that many economists consider full employment levels, 5 – 6 percent. But if the same share of the adult population was looking for jobs today as in 2007, our unemployment rate for the state would be a little over 8 percent. That’s probably too high because I think the share of the population that was looking for jobs in 2007 was also a bit abnormal – the boom was going on, perhaps too many people were looking for jobs from a productivity standpoint. So our actual unemployment is probably somewhere between 5 and 8 percent. We’re probably not quite fully recovered, but we’re still doing much better than the nation. Read the rest of this entry »

The OSU Center for Applied Economic Research in the Spears School of Business is hosting the Oklahoma Economic Outlook Conference from 8:30 AM to noon on December 7th at the MetroTech Springlake Campus in Oklahoma City.

The conference features the release of the 2011 National and State Economic Forecast and a discussion of current economic policy by Russell Spears, Director of the OSU Center for Applied Economic Research, and Chad Wilkerson, Branch Executive of the Oklahoma City branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Other sessions include a discussion of innovative strategies for economic development featuring David Wood of the Bartlesville Development Corporation and Lori Broyles of the REI Women’s Business Center; and a look at the urban-rural gap in economic development trends with Deirdre Myers of the Department of Commerce and Kyle Dean of the OSU Center for Applied Economic Reserach.

Registration for the conference is $65 per person with a group discount available. Click here to register.

On January 11th, Chad Wilkerson, the Branch Executive of the Oklahoma City office of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City will be giving a free public lecture on “The Economy Around Us: Recession and Recovery”. Wilkerson, who serves as the Federal Reserve’s regional economist, will look at historical business cycles and current economic trends to offer his assessment of what to expect of the Oklahoma economy as the national recovery begins to take hold. We heard Chad speak on the economy back in April and can highly recommend him as a  perceptive and well-informed presenter.

The talk, which will take place from 12 – 1 pm at the Oklahoma History Center, is part of the Policy & Practice lecture series hosted by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services Office of Planning, Research and Statistics and University of Oklahoma Center for Public Management. Other speakers in the Spring 2010 series include Harvard economics professor David Cutler addressing health care reform; NPR correspondent John Hockenberry on eliminating stereotypes; and Charles Wilson of the Center for Children and Families in San Diego on the impact of childhood trauma.