CHARLESTON -- It was a good decision for West Virginia University to host its annual Economic Outlook Conference on Nov. 1, said national economic analyst David Wyss.

"I'm glad we didn't do this (Wednesday) because things look scary enough without Halloween," he told a group of businessmen and women Thursday morning at Charleston's Embassy Suites.

The conference featured Wyss, chief economist for Standard and Poor's financial services company, who spoke about the state of the U.S. economy, as well as George Hammond, a WVU professor and associate director of its Bureau for Business and Economic Research, who talked about the state of West Virginia's economy.

Representatives from West Virginia's manufacturing, contractors and energy industries spoke as well, along with Mark Muchow, deputy cabinet secretary with the state Department of Revenue.

The overall picture for both the country and the state indicate many challenges ahead. Some of the major national concerns are the weak housing market, the aging population that will drain more and more government funds, the rising price of oil and the need to find new energy sources.

The good thing is that the economy is still growing -- about 2.2 percent this year. And the world economy is doing well despite the United States' slowdown. China has grown 11 percent this year, though its economy is still smaller than the United States', Wyss said.

The overall national question is whether consumers will be able to continue spending the way they've been spending, he said. They need to be saving more for their retirement because the government won't be able to pay out as much in the future as it is now for Social Security and other benefits.

"I don't know what we're going to do about it," he said. "I tried not getting older -- it doesn't seem to work."

It will involve either raising taxes or decreasing entitlements, perhaps raising retirement age to 70, Wyss said.

Making some changes to the healthcare system could play a big part in that, Wyss added. The United States has some of the worst health statistics while it spends the most on health care, he said. It puts 25 percent of its health-care dollars into administration, he said, adding that European countries pay their administrators and doctors well but less, and that they negotiate with drug companies, spend fewer dollars on terminally ill patients who don't benefit, and less on treatments that have a slim chance of working.

"There's no easy solution," Wyss said. "You pay less for health care, you get less health care."

Meanwhile, trends suggest the demand for oil will increase by 50 percent over the next 10 years.

"I don't know where that oil is going to come from," he said.

The country will need to find some alternative fuels, and until coal is an established transportation fuel, he doesn't see it playing a big part.

In West Virginia, the economy is doing better if not keeping up with the nation's. And it depends on which region you're talking about, Hammond said.

The metropolitan areas, for example, have more people employed than the rural ones. The Eastern Panhandle is more affected by the housing meltdown than the Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area, which according to Hammond's report saw a slight increase in appreciation of home values between 2005-06 and 2006-07.

It rose from just over 4 percent to just over 6 percent, while the housing appreciation rate in the Hagerstown, Md.-Martinsburg, W.Va., metropolitan area declined from about 16 percent to 4 percent over that same time.

Hammond said West Virginia does face a drop in its labor participation in the next 10 years, as the working-age population migrates out of state and more workers retire. But for now, West Virginia has reached new highs in terms of employment and per-capita income, and its population is growing, Hammond said.

Coal production has stabilized since a dip in 2003-04, according to Hammond's report, though coal and most industries -- from mining to construction to education and health care -- have seen a slowdown in new jobs in 2006-07.

West Virginia netted 32,000 new jobs since 2003, and 4,700 new jobs over the past four quarters, Hammond said.

Manufacturing is in the most dire shape, having lost 1,600 jobs over the past four quarters, Hammond said, and several thousand in recent years.

Karen Price, president of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, stressed that the businessmen and women of West Virginia need to pull together to lobby the Legislature for some policy changes in these areas: tort reform/civil justice; setting caps on noneconomic damages; reform to asbestos laws, so that a plaintiff has to be injured to sue; home rule; and support for non-partisan or merit selection of state judges.

"We have to make progress in at least one of these areas every year," Price said. "Much work has been done and needs to be done in the future."