Poinsettia

Poinsettia: America’s most popular flower

Poinsettia is our nation’s most popular potted flowering plant. What makes this remarkable is that most poinsettias are sold between the week of Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Despite its short sales period, poinsettia contributed $170 million to the U.S. economy last year, said University of Missouri Extension horticulturist David Trinklein. Native to southern Mexico and […]

Training Graphic

EPA awards $2.5 million to the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs for farmworker pesticide training

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has selected the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs to receive up to $500,000 annually to conduct pesticide safety training across the country over the next five years. With EPA funding, AFOP will administer this grant to provide occupational health and safety training to migrant and seasonal farmworkers in more than […]

Governor Mike Parson

Governor Parson signs Executive Order 20-19 extending state of emergency in Missouri

As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to rise in Missouri and across the Midwest, Governor Mike Parson signed Executive Order 20-19 extending the state of emergency in Missouri through March 31, 2021.  This will allow continued flexibility in deploying critical resources around the state as well as the continued utilization of the Missouri National Guard […]

Unemployment

Missouri’s unemployment rate in October up slightly compared to 2019

The Missouri labor market showed mixed results in October 2020. Employment, seasonally adjusted, increased by 6,400 jobs over the month, but over-the-year job losses resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic remained stubbornly high. The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points from September 2020 to October 2020, but the civilian labor force decreased […]