July 6, 2026

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Grace Schatz If I were advising a family member about buying a house and where to buy a house, right now we only did this at the state level, but this kind of analysis for some of the pillars can be done even more specifically to a metro area, for example.

Taylor St. Germain Hi everyone. This is Taylor St. Germain with ITR Economics. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of TrendsTalk. We at ITR are your apolitical and unbiased source of economic intelligence. And today I wanted to talk long term, and I wanted to bring on a guest to help us do that. I have my colleague Grace, she’s the Managing Director here at ITR economics, and she was one of the hosts of our recent webinar regarding which US states were positioned for the future. For everyone that listened a couple of weeks back, my colleague Derek and I covered some of our immediate reactions to the webinar that Grace and our colleague Connor hosted. But I wanted to bring Grace on to give us a little bit more insight into some of the research, the data and, and her perspective here. So first off, Grace, thanks for thanks for joining us. We appreciate it.

Grace Schatz I’m so happy to.

Taylor St. Germain So I want to jump right in to some of the research. And I’ll say, we analyzed 51 states.

Grace Schatz Including DC.

Taylor St. Germain Yes. We know there’s 50 states, folks. We separated DC out on its own, a lot of our clients were quick to pick up on that. And the research that the team did, that you and Connor did, was really related to which states are best positioned for the future. And I guess I wanted to start with, were there any major surprises as you did some of this research that stood out to you?

Grace Schatz I just have to correct the record, Connor and I did contribute to the research, but our research team and our data team here should really take all the credit. That being said, something that was really surprising to me was that consumer pillar. It came out with a lot of outcomes that I wasn’t necessarily expecting on, on the surface. For example, we talk to our clients, if you have clients in Texas, if you are in Texas, if you know a friend in Texas, you may think that that economy is just growing forever, right? Because we have population growth and there are a lot of great things that are happening in Texas, but that’s actually one of the weakest states from a consumer perspective. What that means to us is, consumers, when they start being hit by recessionary conditions, or maybe even just a squeeze, are not going to be particularly resilient to weather that storm. And that matters. It matters for the kind of activity that will happen in that state thereafter.

Taylor St. Germain Yeah. And I think that was such a big surprise to a lot of our Texas clients who have only heard the good news about their state. But yeah, you know, that’s why we dug into some of this research because there are some things that as we prepare for the 2030s, which we’ve talked about a lot on TrendsTalk, that we should absolutely be aware of. And you mentioned the consumer pillar, Grace, we had four other pillars that really went into this, right?

Grace Schatz Yeah, absolutely. So we were looking at consumer, as you mentioned, population, macroeconomic resiliency, fiscal resiliency, and recession tendency. Though the consumer one had the most surprising outcomes, there were also surprises in some of the others. For example, we had some pretty interesting results on recession tendency. That just means like, how likely is it to fall into recession when the US falls into recession, and some really unusual outcomes there. Nebraska, Utah, South Dakota being some of the top performing economies there. A lot of that has to do with the exposure that they have, what kind of industries are they exposed to in those areas. So a lot of relationship between industry focus and what the tendency toward recession is. So that was another interesting focus of our research.

Taylor St. Germain Yeah, and it seemed like there were some pillars that had a lot more variability versus relative to others, I guess. Can you just talk to that generally?

Grace Schatz Yeah, totally. You could mean it either way, so I’m going to maybe I’ll respond both ways. One, because we had five pillars, there were some states that had really good rankings in some pillars and really bad rankings in others. So variability could be how vastly that that particular state varied in terms of its rankings across the pillars. There were quite a few states that fell into that category actually. And the way we tried to balance that is to be able to say, okay, as we’re working with these states in our consulting programs, we’re going to be able to flag them as high volatility or high variability kinds of states, so we can speak to those clients to say, okay, I know that these pillars didn’t have a lot of commonalities across them. You may have been in a top ten ranking for one and a bottom ten ranking for the other. And you may scratch your head and say, what am I supposed to do about that? What we’re advising our clients to do is weigh those pillars based on what your business does, what’s important to your business. Another way you can take variability or volatility is that within each pillar, there might be really good outcomes for one state or really bad outcomes for the lowest states, or all of them might be pretty well chunked together. We didn’t find a lot of pillars that were really well chunked together. In fact, there was, I think from my perspective, more variability state to state in each of these pillars than I expected. You know, we live in national data most of the time until we’re talking to clients that are specific in a region. So was really interested to find how much variability there was within each pillar too.

Taylor St. Germain I thought that was interesting that it wasn’t, you know, because one of the, I guess, ideas I had going into the presentation were, are there going to be common characteristics among these top performing states? But it was in a number of these states were very high in one area and very low in another, like Colorado. Being in Colorado, we had one of the best economies in terms of diversity, in terms of macroeconomic resiliency. But then when you look more at the fiscal side of things, we were sort of middle of the pack. So even though we were ranked in the top ten for all of you listening in Colorado, which is great news for us, there was still some some warning signs of certain elements that we should be watching.

Grace Schatz And for the one listener in New Hampshire, we’re also in the top ten. I know the state population is low and the opportunity may be low. And I guess that’s part of the point here too, right? We’re talking about an aggregate view of how resilient these economies are going to be. We also have to weight the size of these economies as we look at total aggregate opportunity and where it makes sense to invest.

Taylor St. Germain And it’s no coincidence, folks, that Grace and I are in the top ten states. We’re just really good economists. And so we’re just living up to…

Grace Schatz We’re influencers!

Taylor St. Germain That’s right. That’s right. That’s what we’ll tell ourselves… I guess, from a business application standpoint, I want to touch on the personal side of things, but I mean, what are the primary hopes that you have for folks listening to us that are running a business, operating a business? Because I don’t think we’re necessarily saying you’ve got to pick up and move, but just trying to make that connection for folks on what this data can do to help them.

Grace Schatz I think the application of this data is quite varied. So I’ll just give a couple examples of how I think we might be able to help. If you’re thinking about opening a new facility, for example, and you’re really struggling with labor in your current area, that population pillar may be able to help you find a place to really expand to that will have a very good, a very solid foundation for the kind of work that you’re doing in your business. So one would be expansion. I think another one would be, knowing who to sell to. You may be a firm that sells nationally, for example, you may be looking at this and saying, okay, well, I follow national data, the national data follows me, and I really only have to look at that national data to know where my business is going. I think one of my lessons learned of this is that when we start to hit a bumpy road, some areas are just going to be more resilient than others and more so than I even anticipated going into it. So if you can have your best salespeople in areas that are likely to be more fruitful, that might be a way to make your business even better during a period of decline. And I’d say finally, if you can’t move, at least you know what’s coming. At least you know what the weak points are. And you can tailor your products, tailor your strategy, really create competitive advantages to build a moat so you can capture share within your space. So a lot of ways to slice it. It really depends on where you are and what kind of decisions you’re trying to make for the future.

Taylor St. Germain Yeah. And I think that’s, you know, echoes the personal side of things. You know, for example, Grace, of course, you know, my wife, Sarah, when we look to the future, I say, you know, I’m not giving up my 3% mortgage rate. So I don’t care about what Colorado, how it trends, but, you know, some truth to that. I guess what are the connections that folks can make? I know it’s different for different age groups, of course, and, and where you are and your, sort of investment financial portfolio. But, what are some of the personal takeaways that someone that’s just looking to capitalize on the 2030s can take away?

Grace Schatz I think if on the personal side, you can be looking at the low aspects of these rankings to say, are there opportunities for me to have cash on board going into the decline? So that as assets are depreciated, maybe these are places that you should be looking for businesses that you might be able to get at bottom dollar, let’s say. That’s one example. Another example may be more personal. For example, if I were advising a family member about buying a house and where to buy a house, right now we only did this at the state level. But this kind of analysis for some of the pillars can be done even more specifically to a metro area. So family members that are thinking about moving from one city to another, you might say, like, are you thinking about this as a three year move or a longer move than that. And if it’s longer than that and you’re really trying to put roots in the ground, this is data I think that could be considered to make that kind of decision too. I also have a teenager who’s thinking about where to go for college and what his life might look like after school, and I think he can also use this information to make an informed decision about what the economy might look like when he’s graduating from college. In six years or so it’s not going to be the best time to be a college graduate, but how can he position himself for the best possible start?

Taylor St. Germain Yeah. And you know, I do that from the stage with a lot of the industries too. I say if you have, you know, kids that are graduating, these are some industries you’ll want to be in for the 2030s, and now I think adding the geography behind that makes that pretty powerful information.

Grace Schatz I think so too.

Taylor St. Germain Yeah, absolutely. Anything else you’d want to add, Grace?

Grace Schatz I just want to add that we designed this to be used. We didn’t design this to be research that sat on a shelf. I know that’s probably obvious to you, Taylor, but for our listeners, we don’t do research just to do research around here. We do research in order to apply it, to make your lives better, make your business more successful. So doing that may be a little bit challenging here because each business is nuanced, but we want to use it for that purpose. And we’re already starting to even in just the last two weeks, I’ve been able to have some really great conversations with clients that are applying this already. So, I know we talked a lot about the research side today, but it’s for use.

Taylor St. Germain And if folks, if you want to learn more, there’ll be a link to the recording of Grace and Connor’s webinar in the description and this TrendsTalk description. So please check that out. And Grace, I think there’s another way folks can interact with us.

Grace Schatz If you don’t know how to apply this yet, even after you watch the webinar, you can email us at [email protected], use the title or the subject line “State Index”, and we’ll work on answering your question together. Usually we’ll set up a call so we can talk a bit more in depth about your situation because it is so nuanced here and we want to give good advice.

Taylor St. Germain And as always, folks, please connect with Grace and I on LinkedIn, we’re active over there. I always love to get personal messages from you all, so let us know how we can help there as well. But with that, wanted to thank you all for joining us on this episode of TrendsTalk. Thank you, Grace. And just a reminder to everyone like and subscribe to TrendsTalk wherever you listen to your podcasts. And we look forward to seeing you on the next one. Thanks so much. Take care for now.