Missouri and Kansas economies are two of the unhealthiest in the nation, report says

A Business Insider ranking of state economies places Missouri and Kansas in the bottom 10 when it comes to the state of their economies.

The survey released last week, which examined the economies of 50 states and the District of Columbia, ranked Missouri 47th and Kansas 43rd.

North Dakota had the strongest economy in the country, thanks to the rise of oil fracking there in recent years.

Mississippi, where the survey found weekly wages averaging $747 in the fourth quarter of 2014, had the worst economy.

Seven economic measures were used to create the rankings: unemployment rates, gross domestic product per capita, average weekly wages, and recent growth rates for non-farm payroll jobs, GDP, house prices and wages.

Missouri ranked slightly below average in all of those categories. Employment figures were especially glum. Non-farm payrolls grew just 0.8 percent between June 2014 and June 2015. And Missouri’s 5.8 percent unemployment rate in June was higher than the national rate of 5.3 percent.

The numbers were only slightly better in Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback has been taking heat for economic policies that have invited national scrutiny on everything from the state’s school spending and poverty levels to employment rates.

Like Missouri, the Sunflower State’s non-farm payrolls grew only 0.8 percent between June 2014 and June 2015. Wages in Kansas, between the fourth quarter of 2013 and 2014’s fourth quarter, grew 2.6 percent, slightly weaker than the national rate of 3.5 percent.

But there was good news in Kansas: The state’s unemployment rate of 4.5 percent in June was lower than the national rate of 5.3 percent, according to the ranking.

The Business Insider survey paints a gloomier economic picture of the two states than other rankings have in recent months.

Earlier this year the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Rich States, Poor States, which ranks states according to how well they’re poised for economic prosperity, named Kansas the 18th best state for economic competitiveness. Missouri ranked 27th.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s latest statistics on regional and state employment and unemployment data for July 2015 will be released on Aug. 21.

This story was originally published August 10, 2015 at 12:59 PM with the headline "Missouri and Kansas economies are two of the unhealthiest in the nation, report says."