New numbers provide a glimpse of how much we make in Kansas, how much it costs to live here

Let’s talk about money. Kansas and the Great Plains region didn’t make as much of it as most other parts of the country did in 2016, according to a report released today. But the news also isn’t all bad.

The new report by the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures personal income, which is kind of a foreign concept to me. (I have two kids. The only way I keep income “personal” is to bury it in the yard.) My understanding, though, is personal income means all the wages, rents, dividends and other money that flows into your bank account. So, in the realm of economic statistics, this is one we may care about. Here are some takeaways from the report:

• The Great Plains weren’t so great in 2016. The Plains region — which encompasses Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota — saw personal income increase by 2.7 percent in 2016. That’s a good bit below the national growth rate of 3.6 percent. The Plains region had the slowest growth rate of the eight regions that the report measures. The Far West region had the best growth rate at 4.5 percent.

• Kansas is middle of the pack. Kansas saw personal income grow by 2.8 percent in 2016. So, that’s a bit better than the 2.7 percent average for the Plains states in general. Here’s the rundown:

• Missouri: up 3.5 percent

• Minnesota: up 3 percent

• Kansas: up 2.8 percent

• Nebraska: up 2.8 percent

• Iowa: up 2.3 percent

• South Dakota: up 1.2 percent

• North Dakota: down 1.5 percent

• Don’t even think about moving to Missouri. Perhaps you were tempted by Missouri’s 3.5 percent growth rate. But the report also provides another interesting statistic: per capita income figures. In other words, that’s when you take the total amount of personal income entering a state and divide it by its population. Kansas fares OK in that category. Missouri does not. Below is a list of per capita incomes by state, with the national ranking (i.e., where it ranks among the 50 states and the District of Columbia) in parenthesis.

• North Dakota: $55,038 (No. 10)

• Minnesota: $52,117 (No. 13)

• Nebraska: $49,636 (No. 20)

• Kansas: $48,537 (No. 22)

• South Dakota: $48,049 (No. 23)

• Missouri: $43,723 (No. 43)

• We should all move to Minnesota, right? After all, it has the best of both worlds: high per capita personal income and a strong growth rate. As much as I like I like to say “eh” and reminiscence about the good old days at Lake Wobegon, I think I’ll take a pass. Why? Cost of living. The new federal report doesn’t measure cost of living, but I found a fairly recent report that does rank the states based on cost of living. The numbers come from the Council for Community and Economic Research and were released by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center.

The numbers show Minnesota had a cost of living index of 101.1 in 2016, while Kansas had an index of 90.4. Basically that means that Minnesota has a cost of living that is about 1 percent higher than the national average. It also means that it has a cost of living about 11 percent higher than Kansas. Think about that for a moment: Theoretically the stuff I buy in Minnesota will cost me 11 percent more than it would cost me in Kansas. But my personal income, theoretically, would only be about 7 percent more. Lake Wobegon, my tail. It is more like Lake Moneybegon.

Granted, all this plays out cleaner on paper than in real life, but it is an interesting twist to consider when looking at these sorts of numbers. Kansas does OK in such a comparison. Here’s a look at the per capita income numbers with the cost of living index in parenthesis.

• North Dakota: $55,038 (98.9)

• Minnesota: $52,117 (101.1)

• Nebraska: $49,636 (91.3)

• Kansas: $48,537 (90.4)

• South Dakota: $48,049 (102.8)

• Missouri: $43,723 (90.8)

That analysis does show that you could be a rich man in North Dakota. You, and the approximately five other people who live in the state, could have a grand time. I exaggerate only slightly. The population of North Dakota is about 780,000 people, making it just a little bit larger than Johnson and Wyandotte counties combined. Nebraska also fares slightly better than Kansas, but the cost of living index probably doesn’t factor in the amount of Cornhusker trinkets that you are required to buy as a resident of the state. (Don’t underestimate. Cornhusker toilet bowl seats are expensive.)

• Kansas farmers did OK. We have heard a lot from Gov. Sam Brownback that one of the reasons the state’s tax collections have not fared too well is that the farm economy has been hit hard. Well, these numbers don’t exactly show that. I’m not saying the farm economy has been great, but compared with 2015, this report shows farm earnings grew by $380 million. That actually was the largest dollar amount of growth of any of the state’s in the Plains region. Kansas’ performance was in stark contrast to the situation in Iowa. In Iowa, farm earnings fell by $1.3 billion. They fell by $1 billion in South Dakota and $329 million in Nebraska.

Brownback also has been saying the Kansas economy has suffered from a decline in the oil and gas industry. The report does back up that assertion. Earnings in the mining/oil and gas sector declined by $281 million. That was the second worst decline in the Plains region, trailing only North Dakota, which lost $919 million in oil and gas earnings.

The biggest sector gain, by dollar amount, was the high-tech sector. Earnings in the Kansas high-tech sector increased by $506 million in 2016. That was the third highest in the Plains region. Kansas trailed Minnesota at $2.6 billion in increases, and Missouri at $986 million. The sector that lost the most earnings in Kansas was the “management of companies and enterprises.” Think of that as a fancy phrase for corporate headquarters types of jobs. That sector experienced a loss of $311 million in earnings in 2016. Kansas was the worst performer in the Plains regions in that category.