Montana’s colleges offer research facilities that could benefit the agricultural industry

In a website, vacation1s5.com, states are rated according to which are considered most highly educated. Population numbers seem to impact the outcomes, which leaves Montana is ranked 36th.

The report says, about Montana:

* Population: 1,084,225

* Percentage holding advanced degrees: 10.5%

* Median household income: $55,328

While the state might not be overflowing with a demand for advanced degrees, Montana still offers a lot to students. There are nearly a dozen higher education establishments here, with Montana State University apparently the best of the bunch. While it ranks 263rd on US News’ list, it reportedly boasts a ton of unique research facilities.

As might be expected of a state that highly favors agriculture, these facilities also focus around this industry. They include things like the Plant Growth Center and the Center for Bison and Wildlife Health. While advanced degrees aren’t always a necessity in Montana, having one in this field can still prove beneficial to help push the industry forward.

Montana is so suited to farming that advanced degrees are less of a necessity.

When it comes to population figures, some states rank much higher than others. Montana is one part of the United States that doesn’t fare highly in this regard. Only a handful of states have a smaller population than this western state. Why is this? Well, the prominence of agriculture might have something to do with it.

This industry has had the biggest impact on the state’s economy for centuries, with the land perfectly suited to farming. Again, this might explain why Montana doesn’t rank amongst the most educated states in the US. With its biggest industry not typically requiring advanced degrees, it makes sense that only 10.5% of the population holds one.

With 20.3% of the population holding advanced degrees, Massachusetts ranks at the top of the list for most educated.

The Montana Chamber of Commerce will hold its annual membership meeting in Billings on October 24, beginning at 3 pm, at the Northern Hotel. It will feature presenters from Governor Gianforte’s administration and Moore Information Group, a public opinion research firm.

Evan Wilson, Moore Information Group Vice President, will speak on “Tax Outlook: A Montana Perspective.”

Billings businesswoman, Courtney Kibblewhite is the Montana Chamber Chairperson. Todd O’Hair, Montana Chamber President & CEO, will discuss goals and interim priorities.

The conference will focus on the prospects for Montana’s economy and the roll of the Montana Chamber’s Envision goals.

Outstanding achievers in the state’s business world will be recognized during the Titans of Business Oro Y Plata Awards Ceremony at 5:15 pm.

A networking reception will be held at 5:45 pm—7:00 pm.

Lattice Materials in Bozeman has announced a new general manager, Travis Wood.

Lattice Materials provides custom-grown and machined silicon and germanium materials, serving top defense, technology, security, research and renewable energy companies.  

Lattice is one of the only U.S.-based companies in the world capable of custom-growing optical silicon and germanium crystals, which gives them tremendous opportunity to bring economic growth to the region, especially considering recent reshoring trends and new germanium export restrictions from China.  

Given this pivotal moment in the industry and Wood’s background in growing and scaling businesses, it is an opportune time to bring Wood on as General Manager to utilize his expertise to scale Lattice’s operations, according to company officials. According to Scott Bekemeyer, TPC co-chairman and founder, a partner company of Lattice, Wood “comes to Lattice with 20 years of experience growing and scaling advanced manufacturing companies. He has a deep understanding of the industries that Lattice currently serves, including aerospace, defense, electric power, and electronics.”

“Travis joins Lattice Materials at an opportune time in the industry when there is a growing demand for the specialized manufacturing solutions that Lattice provides,” remarked Bekemeyer. “Under his leadership, Lattice will continue to grow as a world leader in providing mission-critical solutions to help solve pain points in the defense and broader commercial industries.”

By Samuel Stebbins, The Center Square

The U.S. defense budget topped $850 billion in fiscal 2022, more than the combined military spending of the next 10 countries combined. This money goes to fund a wide range of obligations, from operations to payroll for troops and civilian defense personnel. The bulk of the U.S. military budget, however, is spent on contracts with companies in the private sector.

The Defense Department does more business through private contracts than all other federal agencies combined. The Pentagon relies on contractors for services including research and development, weapon systems procurement, facility maintenance, and equipment repair. Outsourcing to third parties in the private sector allows the government to more rapidly and effectively adapt to changing circumstances and needs – though reliance on contractors also raises the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse.

The latest available government data shows that the Pentagon spent $246.8 million on private sector contracts in Montana in 2021. No company in the state received more federal defense dollars that year than S & K Technologies, which brought in $65.7 million in military contracts – or 26.6% of all contractor spending in the state.

Other major defense contractors operating in Montana include Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, James Talcott Construction, Inc., and T & L Sales, which received $25.1 million, $13.7 million, and $12.4 million, respectively, in 2021.

Teresa Gilreath has recently joined Stockman Bank as a Real Estate Loan Officer at the Billings Heights location. She will develop and originate real estate loans while assisting clients in home purchase financing, consolidating debt, lowering monthly payments, construction financing or utilizing their home as an investment tool. Gilreath brings over 39 years of banking experience to the position, which includes 22 years in the mortgage banking industry. Her vast expertise will assist Stockman Bank in deepening client relationships and expanding our real estate loan portfolio.  She has been active in the community and will continue by participating in Stockman Bank related events.

More than a fourth – -27.1 percent – of Montana households do not use credit cards.

Three percent of Montana households are “unbanked”. They do not have credit cards, checking accounts or savings accounts. Another 11.5 percent utilize alternatives to banks and are categorized as “underbanked”, according to Upgraded Points, a consumer information center for travelers. The national average of households without credit cards is 28.5 percent.

Underbanked are households with a checking or savings bank account but who also relied on check cashing, money orders, international remittances, payday loans, rent-to-own services, pawn shop loans, etc.

Nationally, the share of households that are unbanked is 4.5 percent; and those underbanked is 14.1 percent.

Upgraded Points calculated the share of households that do not possess any Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or Discover credit cards in the past 12 months. The report estimates that 123,847 households in Montana do not use credit cards. As a ratio to the population, Montana ranks 25th among states as to households without credit cards, based upon the rejection rate by banks because they lack a credit record or are credit unworthy.

While the available credit to American consumers has reportedly declined, credit card indebtedness reached a record in the second quarter this year at $1.03 trillion, according to the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Total household debt exceeds $17 trillion, with 72.4 percent of that coming from mortgages and home equity lines of credit.

Credit card balances increased by $45 billion, from $986 billion in the first quarter of 2023 to a series high of $1.03 trillion in the Q2 2023, marking a 4.6 percent quarterly increase. Credit card accounts expanded by 5.48 million to 578.35 million. Aggregate limits on credit card accounts increased by $9 billion and now stand at $4.6 trillion.

Montana ranks 43rd in terms of the average debt per credit card holder at $6,160, according to scholaroo.com. Among cardholders with unpaid balances, the national average for card debt stands at $7,227. According to TransUnion millennials have become record setters as to who is behind on credit card payments since the start of the pandemic.

Connecticut residents bear the highest average debt of $9,408, surpassing the national average by 30 percent. Following closely are credit card debtors in New York, holding the second position with an average debt of $9,165. Kentucky has the lowest average credit card debt, with debtors owing just $5,408.

Upgraded Points explains the increased rejection of applicants for credit cards placing much of the reason on inflation and increased interest rates. Banks can respond to these constraints in several ways. Often, they simply pass on higher interest rates to consumers. But in many cases, the banks may also get choosier about issuing credit, whether by limiting how much they lend out or raising the standards for borrowers to get approved. This increased scrutiny can be felt across all lending products, from bank and vehicle loans, to consumer credit cards “that many Americans rely on every day.”

In this environment, more people’s credit card applications are being denied. The rejection rate for credit card applications as of June 2023 sits at 22 percent, one of the highest rates in a decade. After falling to a low of 10 percent in February 2020, the rejection rate spiked to 26 percent in just one year. Credit card rejection rates fell briefly in 2021 but have risen steadily over the last year.

Big-picture economic trends can certainly affect how likely a credit card application is to be approved, but credit card companies are also always looking at factors specific to each application when making an approval decision. Common reasons for rejection include low credit scores, high levels of debt, a history of late payments or bankruptcy, and insufficient income. But the biggest obstacle for many applicants is a “chicken or the egg” dilemma: it’s harder for someone to get approved for credit if they don’t already have a credit history, reports Upgraded Points.

Existing-home sales moved lower in August, according to the National Association of Realtors. Among the four major U.S. regions, sales improved in the Midwest, were unchanged in the Northeast, and slipped in the South and West. All four regions recorded year-over-year sales declines.

Highlights reported by the association include:

* Existing-home sales retreated 0.7% in August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.04 million. Sales dropped 15.3% from one year ago.

* The median existing-home sales price climbed 3.9% from one year ago to $407,100 – the third consecutive month the median sales price surpassed $400,000.

* The inventory of unsold existing homes dipped 0.9% from the prior month to 1.1 million at the end of August, or the equivalent of 3.3 months’ supply at the current monthly sales pace.

“Home sales have been stable for several months, neither rising nor falling in any meaningful way,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “Mortgage rate changes will have a big impact over the short run, while job gains will have a steady, positive impact over the long run. The South had a lighter decline in sales from a year ago due to greater regional job growth since coming out of the pandemic lockdown.”

“Home prices continue to march higher despite lower home sales,” Yun said. “Supply needs to essentially double to moderate home price gains.”

Following the pandemic when thousands of businesses were forcibly closed and many failed, leaving people unemployed and facing big changes in their lives, an unprecedented number launched their own businesses escalating the rate of entrepreneurship.

According to the Washington Post nearly 1 in 5 adults — 19 percent — are in the process of founding a business or have done so in the past 3 and a half years, based on data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, recently released by Babson College. That is the highest level since the survey began in 1999.

In Montana, with more than 30,000 new businesses registered to date in 2023, the state appears to be on pace to have another record year of new business registration. New business registrations in Montana surged in June 2023 with roughly 5,300 new businesses registered with the Secretary of State’s Office, easily surpassing the approximately 4,300 new registrations in June of 2022.

The Montana Business Economic Report revealed 51,508 new businesses registered in 2021, surpassing the 2020 total by more than 12,000. In 2022 the state had record growth with some 53,000 businesses registering.

“We’re seeing an upward trend in entrepreneurship that’s continued through the pandemic, and that’s a really great sign,” said Donna Kelley, a professor at Babson College and the report’s lead author. “It means businesses are introducing innovation, creating jobs and contributing to the competitiveness of the United States.”

Globally, the United States had the third-highest entrepreneurship rate among 21 high-income economies, lagging behind the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but ahead of Canada and the United Kingdom, researchers found.

Applications for new businesses spiked to an all-time high in July 2020, when more than 550,000 Americans filed paperwork to start their own companies. A boost in government funding — in the form of stimulus checks, extra unemployment benefits and small-business loans — gave many people the financial cushion to get started.

Since then, business registrations have remained well above pre-pandemic levels.

But also being reported is that many small businesses founded in recent years are struggling due to economic uncertainty, higher costs and a slowdown in consumer spending. Business closures ticked up last year, to 5.2 percent from 2.9 percent in 2019.

Adults between the ages of 18 and 34 were nearly twice as likely to start businesses as those between 35 and 64. And although men are still slightly more likely than women to start their own companies, that gap continues to narrow. There was also a clear shift away from service industries, such as finance and real estate, toward manufacturing and logistics.

Quote Wizard News analysts found that there has been a 13% decrease in drug related overdose deaths in Montana over the last year – that’s the 4th highest decrease nationwide.

Key Findings for Montana:

* 178 people died of an overdose in the last 12 months

* Overdose deaths nationwide have risen more than 60% in the past 5 years

* Nationally, opioids are found in nearly 70% of overdoses

I wanted to thank you, and the staff at Big Sky Business Journal, for the very flattering article about Wood’s Powr-Grip. We were extremely honored to be chosen by the SBA as one of their Legacy Businesses of the year. Just as we didn’t expect to be recognized by the SBA we are equally flattered by the kind words from the Big Sky Business Journal.

Thank you very much for the great work you guys do in recognizing all the good that goes on in our business community.

Sincerely,

Bryan Wood