State Economy Exceeds Early Projections

Thanks to a positive start to the year for the drilling industry, Wyoming appears to be on the cusp of an upswing in the state’s volatile economy, taking in significantly more money than it was projected to at the start of the year.

According to a report released Monday by the Wyoming Consensus Revenue Estimating Group, Wyoming’s revenue collections are exceeding start-of-year projections by $54.5 million, or 5.4 percent. This reads as welcome news for state and local governments, which rely on these funds to help balance their budgets and develop strategies on what to fund and what to cut.

These numbers mark a noticeable improvement over CREG’s somewhat pessimistic January report, which reduced its October estimates for the 2019-2020 fiscal year by $125.1 million due largely to an expected decrease in oil prices, the Casper Star-Tribune reported .

Despite notable setbacks for Wyoming’s coal industry to start 2019 — news of a diminished workforce, reports of potential plant closures, and signs of hastening decline in the industry as a whole — those seem to have had little effect on the state’s revenue projections for the rest of the year, with actual numbers to start 2019 very much resembling the state’s initial projections.