Better days ahead - Economist accentuates the positive in county's future
www.morningjournalnews.com Monday January 20, 2003 By RYAN GILLIS, Journal Staff Writer
1/20/2003SALEM - While the local economy appears to have entered this latest recession earlier and has been in recession longer than national averages, better days may soon be on the horizon, economically speaking.
According to George Zeller, who spoke Friday at the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce's annual economic forecast luncheon, there is a 70 percent chance Columbiana County's recessional economy will improve before the end of 2003.
A recession is defined as two consecutive fiscal quarters in which the country's gross domestic product, the sum total of all economic activity nation wide, declines. The national economy saw negative GDP during the first three quarters of 2001.
That decline stopped at the fourth quarter, he said, and all four quarters of 2002 saw positive GDP, meaning the national economic outlook is improving. Unfortunately, that growth is much slower to arrive in Columbiana County and the Mahoning Valley than in the rest of the country, he said.
"I don't think its a secret to most of you that this is not the best economic period we've ever had," Zeller told his audience, and his statistics suggested Columbiana County and surrounding areas have yet to see the end of this low economy.
For example, over the past year, Columbiana County alone has lost over 1,000 jobs, and Mahoning and Trumbull counties have lost an additional 3,000 jobs, meaning the total area has lost almost 4 percent of its employment.
Statistics also show the total aggregate earnings from all jobs in Columbiana County still equal about $200 million each quarter, Zeller said, but that figure is 3 percent less than last year, a loss of about $6 million.
"When there's $6 million less in paychecks circulating in people's pockets, that's a problem," he said. "That's a problem certainly for the household where the paychecks are lost, and it's a problem for the business community, too. There's that much less money circulating."
Locally, the recession has been in place since the third quarter of 2000, according to Zeller's figures, and the entire state was in recession throughout 2002. Job losses are also much larger when viewed over a two-year period, about 7 percent of all jobs in the Youngstown metro area were lost, he said.
Zeller's forecast was not all gloom and doom, however. The number of people applying for unemployment in Columbiana County has been decreasing for the past six weeks, which the economist called "a positive sign."
Based on that fact and national trends, Zeller predicted there was a 70 percent chance the county's recession will end before 2003 is over.
The prediction leaves a 30 percent chance the local economy will not improve this year. Zeller said the possible war with Iraq, political instability in Venezuela and changing interest rates are all "wild cards" in the equation which could keep the economy stagnant.
Zeller is a senior researcher at the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland, which coordinates anti-poverty efforts in Cuyahoga County. He has also worked as a sociology professor at both Ashland and Wittenberg universities and served on several statistical committees and task forces at the national, state and local levels.
He is a 1967 graduate of Salem High School.