After experiencing the worst recession since the Great Depression, the U.S. and Kansas economies are recovering.

Alison Felix is a senior economist in the Regional Affairs Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, gave a presentation Monday at a meeting of the local Rotary Club on the progress that the U-S and Kansas economies and how both have improved, but she also talked about the challenges that lie ahead.

She told us afterward, that, “we are doing much better then we were a year ago” But she says Kansas was a little late exiting the recent recession. She says the U-S economy has been expanding the last two years, but says in Kansas it’s only really been expanding in the past year. She says over the past year, employment has increased by 1.9% .

She says the increase in jobs is good for the Kansas economy for multiple reasons. One, as employment goes up, those workers can then go out and spend more money, meaning consumer spending goes up, which helps the retail sector in the state, which also helps the overall state and local governments with their tax revenues with personal income tax and sales tax revenue.

She also talked about manufacturing, residential and commercial construction, agriculture, consumer spending and inflation.

We did get some bad economic news on the national front Monday. The Commerce Department says factory orders fell 1 percent last month, as businesses sharply reduced purchases of machinery and other core capital goods. The decline is the largest in 15 months.

But, that could be just a temporary wrinkle in the overall economy, but most economist agree, there is still a long way to go for the country to get back to where it was before the recession.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 15 points to close at 12,963, Monday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 5 points to 1,364 and the Nasdaq composite index fell 26 to 2,950.