Lynchburg area sees balanced growth

By: Craig Davison | The News & Advance
Published: February 02, 2012

The Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce and Lynchburg College hosted its annual Economic Outlook Conference Wednesday morning at the college, with about 100 people in attendance.

Joseph Turek, dean of the School of Business and Economics at Lynchburg College, spoke on the regional economy.

Turek said the region — the cities of Lynchburg and Bedford and the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell — saw balanced growth in employment over the past year, according November’s figures, the latest available.

"The expansion has been pretty much across the board," he said.

While the Lynchburg metropolitan statistical area saw increases above national levels, it ranked below other regions in the state, Turek said.

The change in employment was 4.8 percent, but the Charlottesville region saw an increase of 6.2 percent and the Winchester region was 5.2 percent, he said.

Turek said the economy has re-emerged from the recession, but gains have been slow. The reason, he said, is businesses were worried about the economy faltering.

"We don’t expect jobs to erupt right after the recovery," he said.

While employment is up from 2010’s low of almost 111,000 to close to 120,000, unemployment has not gone down at the same rate, he said. That is because people who dropped out of the workforce are re-entering it now that more people are hiring, Turek said.

The number of unemployed per advertised job opening was 1.86 in November; an improvement over 2.31 for the same month of 2010.

But, Turek said, "We don’t know what the future holds, what we know is where we’ve been."

Roy Webb, senior economist and research advisor for the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank, spoke on the economy on a national perspective.

The best measure for looking at the country’s economy — gross domestic product — has been growing in an almost straight line for 14 decades, Webb said. He said in an average person’s lifetime, the standard of living goes up four times.

But in the recession and slow recovery, the gross domestic product has been down, he said.

A big role in the tepid recovery is that a lot of homes were built before the recession, Webb said, and those houses are still there as a great substitute for a new house.

"When we build a house, it’s going to last a long time," he said.