Northwest Arkansas Annual Report

The Northwest Arkansas Council Annual Report is published each summer. It reviews the Council’s work over the previous year and describes some of the upcoming priorities. While the Annual Report highlights all the Council’s work, there are times when the Council digs deep to look at a specific issue or challenge in the region.

Previous versions of the Northwest Arkansas Annual Report are available below:

Regional Growth Strategy

The Northwest Arkansas Council’s regional growth strategy outlines a long-term strategy to guide the region as it approaches 1 million residents by 2050.

The report highlights rising housing costs, longer commutes and increasing strain on infrastructure, noting these pressures are interconnected and driven by how growth has occurred across the region.

The strategy calls for a more coordinated approach to align housing, transportation, infrastructure and land use decisions across communities, with the goal of preserving affordability, protecting regional character and strengthening long-term economic competitiveness.

The strategy is supported by two core reports, a Regional Vision and a Growth Strategies Companion Report, along with a series of supporting analyses covering housing, infrastructure, transportation and economic conditions across Northwest Arkansas in 2025.

State of the Northwest Arkansas Region

The State of the Northwest Arkansas Region Report, first published in 2011 and commissioned by the Council, compares Northwest Arkansas with peer regions across the U.S. Those peers include outstanding places such as Austin, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Madison, Wisconsin; Provo-Orem, Utah; and Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina.

The Council chose those peers because it wanted to compare Northwest Arkansas to the best of the best in such areas as employment growth, educational attainment, personal income and the cost of homeownership. The Council’s strong relationship with the University of Arkansas has allowed it to partner with the university to evaluate and track the region’s performance in key areas.

Previous versions of the State of the Northwest Arkansas region are available here.

Arkansas Capital Scan

The Arkansas Capital Scan project was developed in partnership with the University of Arkansas Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. It aims to shed light on the availability of early and growth-stage capital for Arkansas-based startups and small businesses, painting a picture of Arkansas’ economic resilience and evolving investment landscape.

The goal of the report is to quantify an understanding of the availability of capital across the state, as many of the policies and incentives that support entrepreneurship are statewide. And while not all small businesses and startups are seeking venture capital or bank loans, the flow of capital to early-stage companies is a good proxy for the health of an entrepreneurial community.

Previous versions of this report are available here.

Health Care

The Northwest Arkansas Council and Heartland Whole Health Institute released Northwest Arkansas Health Care Vision 2030 report, detailing a roadmap for the future of health care in the region. Since launching the Health Care Transformation Division in 2019, Northwest Arkansas has reduced patient outmigration by $255 million and boosted health care’s economic impact, with a gross regional product growth of 80% from 2018 to 2023. With a projected population of over 1 million by 2050, the region faces increasing demands on health care services.

Key strategies outlined in Vision 2030 include advancing value-based care, expanding specialty services, growing the health care workforce, and fostering research and innovation. Nearly $2 billion in ongoing and planned investments support these goals, with initiatives like new residency programs, partnerships with Mercy and Cleveland Clinic, and the upcoming Alice L. Walton School of Medicine. Vision 2030 calls for continued collaboration and investment to establish Northwest Arkansas as a leading health care destination.

A previous version of this report was released in 2019

Health Care + AI Workforce Readiness Plan

Building on the Council’s Vision 2030 health care strategy, the Northwest Arkansas Council and Accenture released the Northwest Arkansas 2026 Health Care + AI Workforce Readiness Plan, a regional roadmap based on workforce data and stakeholder input to prepare Northwest Arkansas’ growing health care sector for the evolving role of artificial intelligence.

The report finds that AI is more likely to augment local roles than replace them and outlines practical steps to expand training partnerships, build AI literacy and align providers and educators around responsible adoption as demand for care continues to rise.

Northwest Arkansas Regional Recycling Report

The Northwest Arkansas Regional Recycling Report is an annual accounting of recycling collections from the Benton County and Boston Mountain solid waste districts and from a dozen cities with public recycling programs.

NWA Recycles is a joint effort by the Northwest Arkansas Council and the Benton County and Boston Mountain solid waste districts that launched in 2021 with support from the Walmart Foundation. Its aim is to coordinate and improve local recycling services, which has become a major priority for the growing Northwest Arkansas region. A 2022 public infrastructure survey found more than 80 percent of respondents think more recycling is important to the area’s future and are willing to recycle more in their daily lives.

Previous versions of this report were released in 2022 and 2023.

Northwest Arkansas Council Regional Strategy

Over the past decade, Northwest Arkansas developed a successful growth model and economic development track record, which has skyrocketed the region into national rankings for job growth, population growth, talent attraction and quality of life. But the fruits of that success created new challenges as rapidly rising housing prices threaten to undermine the region’s affordable quality of life.

An intentional strategy is required to address these challenges while preserving and enhancing all the things residents love about Northwest Arkansas. The overarching goal of this strategy is to create an economic development future that is both vibrant and equitable, and that builds on the unique character and quality of life that has shaped the region’s economic development success.

The strategy is designed to address the region’s deepening housing affordability challenge, prioritize investments in key economic development initiatives and infrastructure, and ensure that opportunity remains inclusive and equitable. It aims to bolster the region’s ongoing economic development initiatives; talent development, attraction, and retention strategies; and efforts to grow its innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem with these new challenges in mind.

The Council’s previous regional strategy was released in July 2018.