ATLANTA – Ignore the fluctuations in the stock market because the Augusta economy is continuing to grow and add jobs, according to a university forecast released Thursday.
Much of the Wall Street turmoil is in reaction to China’s shifting monetary policy and an overdue correction in its own stock market. The factors generating growth in the United States in the first half of the year – consumer demand and corporate investment – should fuel a healthy second half, too, according to the quarterly outlook produced by the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University.
It’s calling for Georgia’s nominal personal income to increase 4.6 percent this year and a 2.6 employment expansion.
For Augusta, the outlook calls for a 2.7 percent employment increase this year, slightly better than the state overall.
“As global economic health stabilizes, consumers demonstrate a greater propensity to spend and corporate spending resumes, Peach State job growth will accelerate to 2.6 percent for the 2015 calendar year,” said Rajeev Dhawan, the center’s director.
Among the positive signs he lists are a 17-percent increase in container cargo at the Port of Savannah, construction of an “inland port” in North Georgia, a 7-percent expansion in the state’s corporate sector and a 25-percent jump in construction permits for housing in Metro Atlanta.
Albany and Warner Robins will continue to experience the weakest economies of Georgia’s metro areas while Gainesville, Dalton and Savannah will have the most robust, according to the forecast.
“Economic activity in Savannah from the port, combined with carpet and auto manufacturers in Dalton and Gainesville that benefit from national demand, will pull Georgia’s employment growth forward in 2015,” Dhawan wrote in the forecast. “Furthermore, the expected stabilization in global health (no more deterioration, if not outright improvement), a greater spending propensity of consumers as national job growth remains around 220,000 per month, and a pickup in investment spending will all help the economy’s catalyst sectors push past recent stumbles.”
Georgia’s job growth slowed in the first six months of this year to about half of what it was in the second six months of last year, but Dhawan predicts it will accelerate in the remainder of this year.
“From January to June, employment in Augusta grew 2,400 jobs, revealing moderation from the 3,700 jobs created in the last six months of 2014,” he wrote. “In the first half of the year, job losses occurred in the catalyst sectors of professional-and-business services (-140), and manufacturing (-40). Job growth in leisure-and-hospitality was the strongest of the sectors with the creation of 1,100 jobs in the first six months.”
Other sectors doing hiring were education/health which added 400 jobs, retail’s 270, government’s 260 and construction’s 220 in the first half of the year.
The forecast is welcome news on a day when the Georgia Department of Labor announced that the July unemployment rate in metro Augusta rose from 6.8 percent to 7.1 percent in the previous month. However, even that report illustrates how strong the state’s economy is because a year earlier the region’s unemployment rate was at 8.4 percent.
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