Bad numbers, but a good prognosis
There’s really no credible way to sugarcoat the joblessness numbers for Columbus released Thursday by the Georgia Department of Labor and reported by business writer Tony Adams. Unemployment in the metro area went from 6.3 percent in December to 7 percent in January — higher than last year’s 6.8 percent and well above the state rate of 5.5 percent. GDOL said much of the employment drop was due to the “normal seasonal fluctuations in January” (including loss of the temporary retail jobs of the December holidays).
Worse, the January jobless rate was higher here than in any other metro area in the state with the exception of Dalton’s 7.1, not a distinction the city wants to claim.
So it would probably be therapeutic to read about Columbus in the March issue of Georgia Trend magazine. In an article titled “Economy” A Sunny Forecast,” Jeffrey Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, writes that “there is much to celebrate in Columbus-Muscogee County” for 2017.
“The area’s economy will do significantly better this year than it did in 2016,” Humphreys predicts, “thanks to seven factors: (1) The stabilization of troop levels at Fort Benning, (2) faster growth of both the U.S. and Georgia economies, (3) the area’s economic structure, (4) announced expansions by several existing companies, (5) Columbus State University, (6) a sustainable upturn in homebuilding and home prices and (7) more entrepreneurial activity.”
Sunny indeed.
Specifically, he notes that after the 2016 troop losses, no further cuts are planned; and if the post succeeds in getting the Security Force Assistance Brigades, those gains could offset almost half last year’s losses.
The UGA economist also points to the city’s “larger-than-average shares” of benefit from the financial services sector, as well as leisure and hospitality, both of which are expected to see an upsurge this year.
The roster of local attractions is a list Humphreys describes as “long and compelling,” specifically citing the National Infantry Museum, the RiverWalk, the Coca-Cola Space Science Center and Whitewater Express.
The expansion of existing businesses, already reported in these pages, should also provide a major economic surge: Pratt & Whitney, Anthem, Convergys and Path-Tec are just a few among the companies that will provide substantial area job growth in 2017.
And of course Columbus State University, which Humphreys rightly credits as “a pillar of the local economy” (its economic impact, he writes, has increased by 16 percent just in the last five years), will only become more important.
What a university economist predicts will get better in the months to come might be cold comfort to a lot of real people who figure among those bleak and nameless numbers from the months just past. But if that “sunny forecast” proves to have been an accurate prediction of actual sunny economic weather in Columbus, then the comfort will be very real and anything but cold.
This story was originally published March 16, 2017 at 4:27 PM with the headline "Bad numbers, but a good prognosis."