2024 Economic Outlook Seminar next week at Northern

Montana’s 2024 Economic Outlook Seminar is coming to Montana State University-Northern, a five-hour event featuring economic experts from the Hi-Line and Montana discussing projections for the upcoming year’s economy, and, this year, a focus on the opportunities and challenges for green energy in the state as well as a local report.

University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research Director Patrick Barkey said the outlook this year is unique, in that it seems like the economy has returned to normal, more or less.

Barkey said between the COVID-19 pandemic, shortages, supply chain issues, inflation and political chaos, the economy has been in a highly variable state for at least three years now, but it seems like, for the first time since then, the projections point to a, for lack of a better word, normal year.

He said he wants to stress that while the general state of the economy as a whole seems to be normalizing, that doesn’t mean every industry is in a normal state, and there are plenty that are still flagging and plenty that are booming.

He said high interest rates are still affecting general trends for people making big purchases, and some industries have been in subnormal, or supernormal states for so long that they have all but established new normals, at least in the eyes of the public.

He said when the economy evens out like this people tend to pay less attention to the interesting things that are going on in the economy so he wants to make sure people are kept up to date on what’s going on on the local, state and national level.

Barkey said there will be a lot of discussion about the local economy and how it fits into the bigger picture and how it is still being affected by the conditions of the larger economy, especially those sectors that are still in recovery.

Among the industries that will be talked about is tourism, he said, especially recent pushes to diversify the sector and bring people to a wider variety of places, not just Glacier and Yellowstone national parks.

In health care, he said, there are simply too many things to talk about in the relatively short amount of time they will have that day, and there is plenty going on.

He said hundreds of thousands of people are no longer eligible for Medicaid, which is going to have serious consequences, as will the ongoing labor challenges.

In addition the country’s ongoing opioid and suicide crises, Barkey said, for the first time ever, life expectancy in the U.S. is going down, which is remarkable.

He said it’s also likely that health care costs are going to go up significantly in the near future, based on projections, and people are going to have to start talking about serious health care reform, whether they like it or not.

As for the agriculture industry, he said, that is an especially hard industry to predict on a year to year basis, between weather and a number of other highly variable factors.

Barkey said attempts to predict that industry call to mind the famous quote from U.S. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Indeed, Barkey said, it’s important to note that their predictions, while informed, are hardly infallible, as the last few years have shown.

He said economic forecasters have, for some time now, been predicting a recession that never materialized, with the economy recovering far more effectively than expected, so their track record has not been great the last few years.

However, among the many subjects of discussion at the seminar, he said, the biggest one will be Montana’s energy future and what it will take to transition to greener energy sources.

Barkey said, the nuts and bolts of actually implementing green energy in the state is rarely talked about because discussion almost always devolves into a war of words about green energy as a concept.

“We found that the whole discussion was a battle between advocates, and no one was really talking about what it would take,” he said. “ … And we think there is a lot of opportunity for Montana in the transition.”

The centerpiece of this topic, he said, will be a moderated discussion between Sonja Nowakowski of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality and Heather McDowell of Sibanye-Stillwater about the energy transition, moderated by Havre native University of Montana Business College Dean Suzanne Tilleman.

Tilleman said she’s happy to be back in Havre with both of these experts in mineral mining, which will be a big part of the energy transition, as well as Montana’s economic history.

She said she looks forward to a collaborative discussion, having attended many of these seminars in the past.

“I’ve gone to the seminar many times, but I’ve never participated,” she said. “ … I’m really excited.”

As for the other parts of the seminar, Tilleman said, there will be a lot of interesting discussions about health care and agriculture, but she’s most interested in the discussion of the tourism industry, which is looked at from a local community perspective.

She said people interested in attending can register at https://www.economicoutlookseminar.com .

The event will be from 8 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. March 13 at Hensler Auditorium.