Description

2nd Quarter 2006 Report
This issue of the Virginia Economic Trends includes several changes. A Blacksburg MSA report has been added to the publication, extending coverage to all eleven metropolitan areas in the state. The Blacksburg economy benefits from the innovative energy supplied by its education institutions—which includes Virginia Tech. Blacksburg has the secondhighest concentration of high-tech employment in the state, only exceeded by Northern Virginia.

The definition of high-tech industry has also been modified since the prior issue. There is no formal definition of high-tech industry and, with continued advances in technology, which industries are included as such needs to be periodically revisited. Our definition is based on methodology suggested by Daniel Hecker, U.S. Department of Labor. An industry is classified as high-tech if it possesses at least double the employment in technology-oriented occupations as that of the average for all industries and employs research and development (R&D) scientists and engineers at a rate of at least 70% of the industry average for R&D performing industries. A complete list of high-tech industries can be found in Definitions and Sources on the inside back cover.

One other change in this issue is the composition of the regional leading indexes. In order to best capture what is happening on the regional level, the U.S. Leading Index has been removed from the computations and the other indicators have been reweighted. These indexes will continue to be monitored and adjusted as necessary to insure that they are accurately capturing and forecasting activities in the regional economies.