Still moderately lower. That's the latest word on the greater Grand Rapids economy, according to data collected in the last two weeks of February. New orders, our index of business improvement, came in at -20. Since last month's reading was -28 and the previous month was an anemic -57, it is tempting to become overly optimistic. But negative is still negative, and at this time, we can only say that the rate of decline is lessening. The production index moderated to -31, up from -38, as did our index of purchases, which edged up to -44 from -53. However, the index of employment posted a record low of -48, surpassing our previous record set in October 2001. The firms that last month reported adding staff are still in a modest hiring mode, but they were more than offset by the larger number of firms reporting staff reductions. |