Central Arkansas Still Not Fully Recovered From Recession, Says Study

Chris Hickey with our content partner, KUAR FM 89.1 News reports:

Central Arkansas saw some positive economic outcomes for 2014 and may continue to see more growth in the coming years. That’s according to Metroplan, an agency which studies economic and social patterns of the four-county region, which includes Pulaski, Faulkner, Saline and Lonoke counties.

Jonathan Lupton, a research planner at Metroplan led the annual study. He says the hospitality and leisure sectors continue to employ more workers in the area, making up for losses in manufacturing and construction caused by the recession.

“We are similar to the national average in having a growing healthcare sector and growing education sector. We’re a little different from the national average in our leisure and hospitality sector, growing a little faster than the U.S. average. And that might be a sign of a maturing economy. It may be a sign of more economic dynamism than you may think at first sight,” he says.

He notes local unemployment is also below pre-recession levels and could keep dropping.

“It could still go down a little further because we know that in the late 90’s local unemployment was down to 2.9 percent for a couple of months and that’s almost hard to believe now. But I think it could still move downward a little bit and I think you’ll see some people who’ve been out of the workforce for a little while being enticed back,” he says.

Lupton says the effects of the recession still remain as many thousands of workers who lost jobs at that time have still not regained employment. According to Metroplan, the number of working people in Central Arkansas has dropped by 1.9 percent since 2009, whereas the area’s population grew by 7.3 percent over that span.

You can read the entire study here.