Iowa City Real Estate: Johnson County Economic Data
If you’re thinking of relocating to the Iowa City area one of the top things on your mind is sure to be how the economy is doing. I can tell you we’re a relocation town. We have the University or Iowa, the UI Hospitals and multiple large companies in our area and are well equipped to deal with challenging times. That’s all true, but not what I’m here to talk about today. Today I want to introduce you to an interactive tool to prove my point. Check out this very cool AP Interactive Map. It provides us with a look at the economic stress index all across the US county by county. Johnson County is doing better than the rest of the state and shapes up pretty well nationally too. Check it out for yourself. It really is a pretty cool map and gives you the opportunity to look at states and counties with real problems, along with those that are doing really well. The central states seem to be doing best in the country.
Just to give you a baseline: A stress index of 11 is bad. The map is not real time of course. Currently it’s based on data from November 2009. Johnson County had a stress index of 4.89 in November, much better than the state average of 7.52. Market indicators used to gauge the stress index are unemployment: 4.2% in Johnson County. Forclosures @ 0.18% and Bankruptcies @ 0.54%.
