Region slow to recover from recession
Two-and-a-half years after the beginning of the Great Recession, the economic recovery in the Greensboro-High Point metro area remains short on jobs and appears more fragile than ever.
What’s more, the recession locally has been more severe and the subsequent recovery weaker than in the three previous recessions dating to 1981.
So says a new report from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
The Brookings analysis of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas shows that in the first quarter of 2010, the Greensboro area suffered two blows — a further decline in employment and a significant dip in the growth of goods and services.
“Your jobs and (output) performance have been really bad,” said Alec Friedhoff, a Brookings research analyst. “You’ve just been hit so hard.”
Data show that employment in the region dropped one-tenth of a percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, but fell four-tenths of a percent in the first quarter of 2010.
Output, called gross metro product, grew by 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter, but expanded by only nine-tenths of a percent in the first quarter.
“GMP growth during the first quarter was positive — so the economy is still recovering — though the rate of growth was less than half of what it was during the previous quarter,” Friedhoff said. “The more troubling trend, and the one that represents a real stumble, is ... the rate of employment decline.”
For the same period, employment grew in Raleigh and Charlotte.
The growth in goods and services in those areas outpaced the performance in the Greensboro-High Point metro area, which includes Guilford, Randolph and Rockingham counties.
“You can say you are officially out of a recession, but it doesn’t feel like it, and it’s not going to feel like it for some time,” Friedhoff said. “People are going to have to be back at work before they feel this thing is over.”
The region’s unemployment rate at the end of March hit 11.6 percent, putting Greensboro-High Point in the bottom quarter among the 100 largest metro areas.
Others say the growth in the economy hasn’t been sufficient to help the employment picture and may not any time soon.
“There are questions about whether the growth we have had is sustainable,” said John Quinterno, a principal with South by North Strategies, a research firm in Chapel Hill. “ .... We are right now in a kind of stalled economy.”
The report indicates the local economy could have been much worse if the area had suffered the housing crisis that many metro areas experienced.
“We’ve been fortunate that we have avoided the boom-bust (housing) cycle,” said Keith Debbage, a professor of urban geography at UNCG. “The fact that we have had relatively stable house prices has helped in that respect .... That said, there’s a lot of hurt going around in our community.”
The Brookings report substantiates that hurt.
It says that nine quarters after the beginning of the 1981 recession, the area had recovered 103 percent of the jobs it had lost in that downturn.
But nine quarters into the current recession, that number stands at 91 percent.
Those jobs won’t be replaced quickly.
In fact, Quinterno fears the state could be in for “another rough patch” later in the year.
The reason? Many federal programs designed to boost the economy are ending, and “it is unclear what will take their place.”
Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com
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