For more than 50 years, the Bureau of Business and Economic Research has been working to help Montanans understand their state and make informed decisions in their personal and professional lives. This Web site was designed to provide you with the Bureau's various types of information pertinent to Montana's economy.

The Bureau—a research department within The University of Montana-Missoula's School of Business Administration—was founded in 1948 to monitor the state's economic and business conditions. The Bureau has expanded from a staff of four to a research department of 18 full-time employees and more than a dozen part-time workers.

The national unemployment rate jumped to 6.4 percent in June -- the highest it's been since 1994. Since recession began in 2001, the private sector has lost 3.1 million jobs. And it is taking longer for displaced workers to find a job. In "Unemployment Rate Jumps, While Payrolls Decline," the Economic Policy Institute says it's beginning to look a lot like the crunch in the early 1980s: today, the average unemployed worker spends 19.8 weeks looking for work, the highest number since August 1983, when the average unemployment time hit 20 weeks and the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent.

With more than 800,000 children estimated to spend some time in foster care each year, the federal government allocates approximately $7 billion annually to states to investigate abuse and neglect, place children in safe homes, and deliver services to keep families together. But low salaries, high caseloads and excessive paperwork make recruiting and retaining good staff difficult, according to the General Accounting Office, which recommends that HHS take action.

The Food Research and Action Center has food stamp outreach materials in several languages.

What do computers mean to kids' development? Or families' opportunities? This Fall/Winter 2000 issue of the Packard Foundation's Future of Children series identifies roles for researchers, parents, educators, funders and government agencies to help ensure that all children are empowered to use computers effectively, responsibly and creatively to "shape the digital world of tomorrow."

Families leaving welfare and trying to find gainful employment in rural areas face different, and sometimes more persistent, barriers than urban families, according to a series of reports from the Joint Center of Poverty Research.

This organization documents the widening gap between the income from full-time low-wage work and the average cost of housing units where low-wage renters live and work.

An organization that promotes fairnss in the workplace, access to quality affordable healthcare, and policies that help women and men meet the dual demands of work and family.

The Center, located at Tufts University, brings the latest empirical evidence to the attention of policy makers, the press and the public, and provides advocacy groups and citizen organizations with the latest knowledge in relevant fields.

Every 3.6 seconds, someone dies from hunger; three-fourths of these deaths are children under five. Make a donation just by clicking onto this site.