MANSFIELD, Ohio – The snow and cold did not keep away talks of the economy Friday morning. The Richland Area Chamber of Commerce hosted a 2015 Economic Forecast Breakfast at the Mid Ohio Education Service Center Friday morning. Global, national and local trends seem to be improving, economically speaking, according to speaker Dr. Joel Elvery.
Elvery is an economist in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, one of the 12 branches in the United States. He summarized financial trends on the global, national and local level, and gave predictions for the near future.
He said this last year (2014) has been a strong year nationally – and locally.
“In four of the last five quarters, we’ve had growth above three percent. And in the last two quarters it’s been four-and-a-half and five percent. This is strongest growth we’ve seen in quite a while and it’s the most sustained growth we’ve seen in quite a while,” said Elvery.
He pointed out that the nation has seen growth specifically in the auto and retail industries. For Richland County, Elvery noted 1.6 percent more jobs in June 2014 than June 2013 – with the construction as the most dense employment sector. The next most dense is the natural resource and mining employment sector.
Elvery also outlined a decrease in the unemployment rate for Richland County since mid-2013.
“Your (Richland County) declines in unemployment have been stronger than the state and the nation from June 2013 to June 2014,” Elvery noted.
The current unemployment rate – 5.3 percent – still rests higher than the state, but the rate has declined faster and stronger than the state, which is currently 5 percent according to Elvery. The national unemployment rate is 5.8 percent.
Elvery said Richland County had robust growth in home prices in 2014.
“House prices are up 9.5 percent in October. And that’s after having house price declines since 2010,” noted Elvery.
To wrap up his recap of 2014 for Richland County, Elvery said, “2014 was a good year for Richland County.”
On a global level, Elvery expected the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany to slow and growth to increase in other emerging countries like, the United States, Canada, Spain, France and Italy. He predicts the GDP will grow to a range of 2.6 to 2.9 percent in the United States and the national unemployment rate will fall to 5.5 percent.
When asked of what Richland County could do to improve financial status in the year to come, he replied, “If you’re considering making investments and borrowing money, now’s a good time. Interest rates are expected to start increasing this year and we don’t exactly know when. So invest sooner rather than later.”
Executive Director of Richland Community Development Group Bridget McDaniel said, “The message was interesting to us, maybe not anything we didn’t know, but it’s nice to hear an outsider’s perspective. I think we learned that we have had some successes in some area of the economy, but there’s also challenges and we’ll continue to work on those.”
She added, “I think we also need to work on loss of population and keeping groups like our Richland Young Professionals alive and functioning so we attract more young professionals to the area.”
