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The Eastern Panhandle Economic Outlook: 2021-2025, Brian Lego, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle (EPH) has ranked as the state’s strongest economic region for a decade, with employment and other major indicators pointing to underlying strength in the EPH economy compared to West Virginia. The COVID-19 pandemic has hurt the EPH’s economy and will weigh on growth over the next few months, but the area should snap back by late-2021. In this report, we present a detailed discussion of the current state of the EPH economy along with our forecast for the likely path of economic activity over the next five years.