Category: ED Planning

Too often, negative stories of potential job losses accompany discussions of the impact of automation.  However, success stories of automation’s impact exist all over the United States in communities and companies.     Growth has centered on robotics, Automated Vehicles (AVs), embedded and mobile technology, Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and the disrupters of established industries. Robotics Robots […]

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Automation is having a dramatic impact on real estate development that creates challenges and opportunities in urban, suburban and rural markets.  The growth of E-Commerce closed a record number of retail establishments in the US and will continue to do so but also creates opportunities for the development of fulfillment centers.  The advent of Autonomous […]

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Automation has been impacting work in the United States for over 100 years.  The Kennedy Administration pointed to the impact of automation impacting the manufacturing sector starting in the 1950s.  Industries like textiles figured out how machines could replace humans and produce higher quality products for less money.  Occupations with the highest chance of being automated […]

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The recently enacted federal tax reform legislation permits the US Treasury to designate up to 25% of a state’s low wealth census tracts and up to 5% of non-low wealth consensus tracts contiguous to low wealth districts to be Opportunity Zones.   Designated census tracts determined to be Opportunity Zones encourage private sector investment by offering: […]

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What is the Federal Opportunity Zone Program? The federal tax reform made thousands of changes to the US tax code but one in particular that has caught the attention of the economic development community is the new “Qualified Opportunity Zone” program.  The Qualified Opportunity Zone program is designed to encourage investment in businesses that are located […]

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Measuring the impact of automation involves a consideration of both macroeconomic and microeconomic measures; however, the critical measure of how automation impacts a regional economy is what regions will gain and lose jobs with this massive economic change. The American economy has benefitted from technological advances. In 1870, almost 50% of American employees worked in […]

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The American economy remains the strongest in the world but technology advances are expected to have a major impact on a range of American industries as illustrated by the table below. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current economic projections see overall job growth in professional services, educational services, and health care while most other […]

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Automation is the technique of making an apparatus, a process, or a system operate automatically and can further be defined as the creation and application of technology to monitor and control the production and delivery of products and services.[i] Recent economic analysis of automation is often tied to “machine learning” or Artificial Intelligence and machine robotics. […]

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We live in the age of Big Data. The access to massive amounts of data points matched with unprecedented computer power and broadband speeds are transforming the global economy. Who would have imagined that Amazon would have over 300,000 employees at the end of 2018 compared to just 100,000 at General Motors? Join the Montrose […]

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