Economy
Idaho Falls serves as a regional hub for health care, travel and business in eastern Idaho.
The community's economy was mostly agriculturally focused until the opening of the National Reactor Testing Station in the desert west of Idaho Falls in 1949. The city subsequently became largely dependent on high-income jobs from the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), known locally simply as "The Site." The laboratory made several cutbacks in 1993. Since then the town has added call centers, a growing retail, entertainment, and restaurant sector, and a regional medical center.
Idaho Falls was named by Business Week as one of the 2010 List of "Best Places to Raise Kids". In addition, Forbes.com selected Idaho Falls as one of the "2010 Best Small Places for Business & Careers". Also Money.CNN.com included Idaho Falls as one of their "Top 100 Cities in 2010".
Idaho Falls has become a regional business hub. It hosts the headquarters of the United Potato Growers of Idaho and District 7 of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. It is also the home to several small to medium sized national corporations such as North Wind, Inc., Melaleuca, Inc and Press-A-Print.
The median home price in Idaho Falls was $224,800 in January 2007.
Idaho Falls, Idaho / U.S. avg:
- Area population 122,995 / 647,500
- Median home price $224,800 / $235,000
- Cost-of-living index 99.8 / 100.0
- Unemployment rate 2.7% / 4.6%
- Job growth—5 years 18.84% / 4.90%
- Job growth—1 year 2.74% / 1.66%
- Median household income $47,719 / $46,326
Read more about this topic: Idaho Falls, Idaho
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)