Key economic measures like unemployment rates
Describing record-setting improvements in key economic measures like unemployment rates, new businesses, capital investment and exports, as well as trend-setting reform in education and health care, Gov. Beshear said Kentucky had regained the national leadership position it had held centuries ago.
"We can hold our heads high once again," he said. "Because Kentucky is back, and we're back with a vengeance. ... In the public and private halls of power, where the issues of today are being hammered out, Kentucky has become – once again – a national example of leadership and success."
Originally scheduled for February, Gov. Beshear's annual appearance before the joint session of the Kentucky General Assembly was moved up because he has been invited to Europe to speak at an international gathering of auto manufacturers.
He used the invitation as an example of the increased global presence of Kentucky's advanced manufacturing industry. And he described in detail numbers and rankings that show how far Kentucky's economy has come in the last seven years, including a drop in the unemployment rate from 10.7 percent to 6 percent; four straight years of record exports; the nation's highest percentage growth in new business in 2013; and almost $10 billion in new business investment through the performance-based Incentives for a New Kentucky program overhauled in 2009.
He cited an official Federal Reserve evaluation that concluded Kentucky's economy had not only recovered losses suffered during the recession but had moved on to its highest-ever economic activity.
"In other words," Gov. Beshear said, "our economy had hit bottom, bounced off that bottom and now has so much momentum that we've bounced higher than we were when the struggle started."