Midstate
economy showing positive growth trends, Penn says
MURFREESBORO — Though
the unemployment rate still remains higher than pre-Great Recession levels in
Rutherford and other Midstate counties, upward trends in job growth rates,
housing permits and construction point to a stronger economic future for the
region.
“It’s mostly good news,” said professor David Penn, director of the MTSU Business and
Economic Research Center, during his presentation Friday at the annual MTSU
Economic Outlook Conference inside the Student Union. “I really had to look for
some bad news.”
Penn provided an exhaustive
update at the half-day conference, showing statistics on statewide and Midstate
economic indicators such as employment rates, income growth, sales tax
collections, housing starts and manufacturing, to name a few. You can review
Penn’s presentation online at www.mtsu.edu/berc.
Job
growth is “booming” in the Midstate, Penn said, pointing out that Rutherford
County ranked sixth nationally among the largest 334 U.S. counties for rate of overall
job growth, with Williamson County ranking 15th. For private sector growth, the
Nashville Metropolitan Statistical Area was tops in the nation among large
metro areas.
Other
positive trends for Middle Tennessee: housing construction is improving
significantly; home price growth is positive; consumer spending is growing; and
most sectors are adding jobs.
Regarding
the unemployment rate’s slow improvement — 6.7 percent for the Nashville Metro
Area in the second quarter, unchanged from a year earlier — Penn again pointed
to a positive: More people are entering the job market seeking work. On a
statewide level, most of the counties with the lowest jobless rates are located
in the Midstate.
“If
you want to know how the economy is improving, don’t look at the unemployment
rate because that’s the last thing to come along,” Penn said.
Among
the negatives cited by Penn were drops in employment within the financial and
government sectors.
MTSU alumna Beverly George, who works for Pinnacle Financial
in Murfreesboro, was attending the conference for the first time. George, who
earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business at MTSU, said she plans
to come back and was pleased with the wealth of information shared during the presentations.
“It was a privilege to hear such distinguished speakers,”
George said. “It was interesting to realize what a valuable resource we have in
the Business and Economic Research Center right here at MTSU.”
Among the speakers was conference mainstay Donald Ratajczak,
nationally known economist and regent’s professor of economics emeritus at
Georgia State University who gave his insights on the national economy.
Ratajczak discussed the economic impact of Federal Reserve interest
rate policies and Washington politics, specifically the intensely partisan
nature of the debates surrounding the debt ceiling, Affordable Care Act and
threat of government shutdown.
“If there is a
disruption of financial institutions, and it’s blamed on one party, that party
could see its relevance disappear very rapidly,” Ratajczak said.
Ratajczak said a disruption would likely affect still wary
consumers negatively. He pointed to increased consumer spending for automobiles
and home renovations as among the few bright spots within a national economy
still growing slowly.
“Consumers are showing no willingness to spend anywhere else
and that’s the problem,” he said.
Financial expert and author David Darst, managing director and chief investment strategist for
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in New York, wrapped up the conference with his
perspective on the global economy.
Darst, a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox, PBS and
other television channels, said that “structural reform” was needed to create
more jobs in today’s economy. With interest rates so low, people are sitting on
trillions of dollars in cash rather than investing it.
“We have to be investing as a country and we have to be
investing as individuals,” he said. “And we’re not. We’re on strike.”
Darst pointed to the importance that academia plays in
creating new jobs, with the strong connections between professors and students
helping to launch transformative companies such as Google.
“The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the
world,” he said of the rapid changes in technology and economic models. “The
United States is in inning three of a resurgence … a recovery, a renaissance
like you cannot believe.”
The conference targets bankers, business owners and
managers, community officials and leaders, business people, business and
economics educators, students and others interested in the future economic
growth of the region.
The Jennings A. Jones Chair
of Excellence in Free
Enterprise, the Weatherford Chair of Finance, and the MTSU Business and
Economic Research Center co-sponsor the conference.
For more information, call the Jones College of Business at
615-898-2764.
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