The West is changing rapidly. Our population is growing and becoming more diverse. Our economy is booming, though a number of traditional industries are not faring well and many places are left out. With more people and economic activities, many of our landscapes are under more pressure than ever.

Whether you have lived in the West for a long time or a short time, you may have wondered: What happened to the West we once knew? What kind of West are we creating?

In recent decades, the West has been significantly affected by the global economy and overseas markets, the aging of our population, and the growing popularity of our unique public lands and natural amenities. How we support our families has changed considerably in the last generation alone.

And yet our perceptions have often not been so quick to evolve. As with the persistent myth of the individualist cowboy, we cling to notions that are out of step with today’s realities. This report highlights ten important – often misread – truths and economic trends that every Westerner should know.

These truths and trends can provide some insight into what has become of the West we once knew. More importantly they can help guide us toward “a West both prosperous and environmentally healthy, with a civilization to match its scenery,” as Western writer Wallace Stegner envisioned.

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Ten Truths & Trends

1. The West is more than big cities and remote rural landscapes.

The vast majority of the West’s people live in urban areas. Some of its cities are among the nation’s fastest growing. At the same time, the region contains great expanses of open lands with very low population densities. These two facts can lead us to overlook a thriving middle ground where people are finding ways to enjoy the benefits of small-town living while still having access to larger markets.
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2. Your next job will likely be in services.

As our national economy evolves beyond competitive advantages in basic commodity production and even manufacturing, we’re seeing a mature service sector emerge as the new economic goliath. The West is by no means exempt from this trend. Seventy percent of all net new jobs created in the West between 1970 and 2000 were service and professional jobs.
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3. More and more of us don’t have conventional jobs.

We know that many people are punching time clocks, filing paperwork, selling products or harvesting crops across the West. But it might surprise you to know that non-labor income, such as retirement and investments, is now the second largest source of income (after services) in the West.
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4. The more you learn, the more you earn!

In the West’s longstanding lament over low wages, there is a glimmer of hope: education. Places that successfully educate their young and attract and retain educated workers are seeing rising wages.
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5. Public lands benefit the economy of the West.

In the West, the presence of public lands in a county is good for the economy. Personal income, adjusted for inflation, grows faster in counties with a significant percentage of their land base in public ownership. What’s more, counties with protected public lands – land set aside for conservation – show an even more marked increase in personal income.
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6. The extractive economy of the Old West is rare in the New West.

Much of the West and our regional sense of place have been shaped by mining, energy development and timber production. Yet today there are few truly resource-dependent counties left – even in the face of a sharp push for energy development in the interior West.
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7. Agriculture is not growing.

Agriculture has a long and important history in the West and is still the most extensive land use in the region. However, its relative economic contribution has been flat in recent decades. As the rest of the economy grows, agriculture’s importance in terms of jobs and income has diminished, and in some cases the industry is having trouble competing for scare resources, such as water, with other users.
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8. More residences don’t mean extra tax revenues.

County officials and other elected leaders are often led to believe that land converted to residential use will bring government extra revenue due to an expanded tax base. But the financial contribution that residences make via tax revenues is far outweighed by their increased demand on the local infrastructure and services like roads, public health and safety, and education.
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9. Energy development has high opportunity costs.

There is not enough oil recoverable at reasonable cost in the United States to substantially displace imports. Reserves in the intermountain West contain only a three-and-one-half-month supply of petroleum. Pursuing these limited resources could jeopardize the emerging competitive advantage of the West: quality of life.
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10. Standard of living is not the same as quality of life.

Economic success is often measured in terms of growth, such as changes in employment and total personal income. While growth is a good gauge for comparing different regions of the West, it is a blunt and often misleading instrument for understanding well-being.
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