North Central West Virginia Economic Outlook 2021-2025

North Central West Virginia has been one of the state’s strongest and steadiest economic regions for the past decade or so. The four-county area did lose some jobs during 2019, but those losses were tied to court-ordered delays of pipeline construction projects and layoffs at a large manufacturer rather than a deterioration in the area’s underlying economic fundamentals. Despite the region’s solid economic foundation, the COVID-19 pandemic did strike a major blow to the region’s economy in early-2020 and continues to affect the area to this day. In this report, we present a detailed discussion of North Central West Virginia’s economy along with our forecast for regional conditions for the next five years