By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Creighton University economist Ernie Goss is still concerned about the manufacturing sector across the Midwest.
"It's more moving sideways in terms of manufacturing, so I'm not real optimistic," Goss said as his latest survey was released this week. "There were, I guess, some things that were a little bit better. Exports were a little stronger than what we've seen, so I guess we could attribute some of the not-such-bad or not-weak numbers because of exports."
Companies are trying to shorten their supply chains and they are starting to see some success in that regard.
"We talked about reshoring," Goss said. "Of course, this is a big issue for the Biden administration. They've incentivized bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. internationally. About 50 percent of the companies, 48 percent actually, indicated they're doing more of their purchasing domestically. Of course, that's good news for the domestic economy. Now, only 60 percent said they brought all their purchasing or reshored 100 percent back to the U.S., so that was some good news."
However, those workers need places to live, and that seems to be where the rub is right now, at least nationally.
"We're seeing some numbers in real estate that are not very comforting," Goss said. "That's not so much for this part of the country, but inventories of houses on the market are rising dramatically, particularly in Florida, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, some real big issues there. So, the real estate sector, residential, has been moving solidly. Now, it's not so much. Commercial has been in trouble for some time now, and so real estate is going to be one of the cracks we're seeing in the economy ahead."
Goss says the real estate market cannot continue to price first time homebuyers out and continue to grow.