ED Now

On the last day of IEDC’s 2022 Leadership Summit held in Coachella, Calif., Clint Nessmith, CEO of Resource Development Group, led a panel of leaders of successful and innovative regional partnerships in exploring the unique benefits a regional organization can create, as well as difficulties faced by regional developers, from navigating politics to today’s evolving economic development field. Nessmith opened the panel by espousing an “economic development truth”: all economic development is regional. In selling a project or proposal, developers must look at their work on a regional level, leveraging their region’s vibrant core, access to housing, quality schools, and other features. In failing to do so, ...

Montgomery County, Md., is a 500-square-mile county with 1.05 million people adjacent to Washington, D.C. The county has many strong assets, including federal labs and agencies, a thriving life science sector, and an incredibly diverse and well-educated population. One of its strongest assets is its breadth of strong, business-focused organizations that communicate effectively with one another. As in other communities, the pandemic hit industries such as hospitality, retail, restaurants, and entertainment particularly hard, and the county hit a historic unemployment high in April 2020. Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC), in close collaboration with Montgomery County government, WorkSource Montgomery (WSM), Visit ...

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July report shows the nation still in a climb to return to pre-pandemic levels of employment and labor force participation. However, uncertainty surrounding the Delta variants could paint a very different picture for August. Current situation by the numbers The U.S. economy added 943,000 jobs in July, pushing the unemployment rate down from 5.9 to 5.4 percent. This is the lowest the country has seen since the pandemic began. Total employment is still about 5.7 million below January and February 2020. The leisure and hospitality sector had the most improvement with 380,000 jobs returning—including 253,000 in restaurants and bars—though it’s still down 1.7 million jobs from ...

Broadband access is in the spotlight as never before, thanks to a year like never before and the trends it accelerated in remote work, online learning, and other uses for reliable, affordable internet. This paper, the latest report from IEDC's Economic Development Research Partners, shows how a range of communities are addressing their broadband needs and the roles in which economic developers are making a difference.