Three WVU students present report on economic outlook of Parkersburg

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WTAP) - The Mid-Ohio Valley Chamber of Commerce hosted the MOV Economic Outlook presentation at West Virginia University on Thursday afternoon.

The event was back in-person for the first time since the pandemic started.

The presentation touched on important topics within the Mid-Ohio Valley such as: trends for growth within the economy, population indicators, economic challenges, demographics, small business opportunities, and workforce activity.

Three students in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University gave the presentation to a room full of about 70 people.

One of the presenters and a senior majoring in Economics, Lauren Moore, talked about what she thought was the most important issue discussed in today’s presentation.

“Understanding that there are people out there that need to be looking for jobs. How can we get them back into the job force that those have left during Covid maybe because of health reasons or other circumstances. How can we create them back into the workforce to continue to develop more opportunities and get people back into working everyday and getting people to be able to reach their dreams and go through their potentials as well as boost the region and the economy here,” said Moore.

The students were grateful for all of the help their professor gave them this semester in preparing them for this presentation in front of many people.

Director of the WVU Bureau of Business and Economic Research, Dr. John Deskins, thinks it is important for his students to give a presentation like this.

“Having the students do this I think is a good learning experience for them. They’re out in the community. They’re doing real work. They’re not producing a paper that I just grade and file it away. They’re producing real work that people benefit from and frankly the fact that the students are helping us work on these projects it gives us more bandwidth,” said Dr. Deskins.

If you would like a copy of the full economic outlook report you can reach out to the MOV Chamber of Commerce to see if there are any extras at this time.

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