Flickr photo by queenkvThe Kansas economy is growing, but hasn’t yet reached the pre-recession peaks. That’s what Kansas Secretary of Labor Lana Gordon said at an economic briefing in advance of the Labor Day Holiday. Job creation and personal incomes have increased from recession levels, but the state is still short jobs from before the Great Recession. And the labor force in Kansas has shrunk recently, but that may not be bad news. The labor force is the number of Kansans working or looking for jobs. Tyler Tenbrink, a labor economist with the Kansas Department of Labor, says that the recession caused some people to delay retirement because their stock portfolios shrank.
Staff with the Department of Labor said it’s too soon to know if tax cuts enacted in Kansas in recent years have affected the economy.