Midwest business conditions improve

A monthly survey of business conditions in Iowa and other Midwestern states found slight improvement in March.

Creighton University's Mid-American Business Conditions Index edged up to 50.6 last month from February's 50.5, marking its third consecutive month of expansion.

Ernie Goss, director of Creighton's Economic Forecasting Group, said the continuing strength of the dollar and weakness among the nation's chief trading partners remains a restraint on regional growth.

'The strong U.S. dollar not only undermines exports, it also reduces the value of foreign earnings,” Goss said in a news release. 'The strong dollar has made U.S. goods much less competitively priced abroad.”

The business conditions index ranges from zero to 100. A reading greater than 50 indicates an expanding economy over the next three to six months.

Creighton's regional employment index increased to 45.9 in March from 44.4 the previous month, but was still below growth neutral.

'Over the past year, the region's manufacturing sector has lost roughly 23,000 manufacturing jobs,” Goss said. 'The losses in manufacturing have spilled over into the broader regional economy, and reduced overall annualized regional employment growth from 1.6 percent to 0.6 percent over the past year.”

The March business conditions index for Iowa was unchanged from February's 51.3.

'Since the beginning of the recovery in 2009, Iowa's manufacturing sector has added more than 13,000 jobs while output per worker has expanded by approximately 8 percent, the sixth highest in the region,” Goss said. 'The state would have added even more jobs had output per worker remained at its 2009 level.”

Goss said Creighton's employment surveys over the past several months point to an expansion in manufacturing output, but with slight manufacturing job losses through the second quarter of this year.

Iowa's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 3.7 percent in February, from 3.5 percent in January, as the number of unemployed Iowans increased, according to Iowa Workforce Development.