Healthcare professions are increasing, administrative jobs are decreasing, unemployment claims are on a downslope and inflation is still a concern. These were some of economist Simon Medcalfe’s observations at the 15th annual Economic Forecast Breakfast.
“What does 2031 look like?” was the question at hand as Medcalfe, Cree-Walker Chair and professor of economics at the Hull College of Business, gave his assessment of Augusta’s economic future.
Members of Augusta’s business community gathered Thursday morning in the Dr. Roscoe Williams Ballroom, at Augusta University’s Summerville campus, for the Hull College of Business’ yearly presentation of local and regional economic projections.
Starting with examinations over the last eight years, Medcalfe observed growth in fields such as transportation, finance, construction and highway maintenance, marketing and business analysis.
Up to 2021, healthcare support positions have grown some 500%.
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“That was the largest growth over the past eight years in any single occupation in the Augusta [Metropolitan Statistical Area],” Medcalfe said, noting how greater numbers of people are employed as physicians’ assistants.
Medcalfe pulled data starting in 2013, he said, because that was the year Army Cyber Command announced its move to Augusta. Since that year, computer operations, particularly in cybersecurity and data analysis, have grown substantially.
Management occupations in Augusta have grown by 11%, but most of that growth has been in cybersecurity and data analysis.
Atlanta’s overall occupational growth in that area has been about 21% in that period. However, Augusta’s growth in the cyber fields has been about 433%, compared to Atlanta’s 124%
“We’re about 3% of the size of the computer occupations in Atlanta,” Medcalfe said. “The occupational group here is very small, relative to the size of the economy relative to Atlanta.”
The professor was also noted that larger cities tend to have higher wages because they have more occupations. Atlanta, for example, has about 700, compared to about 450 in Augusta.
To get a sense of Augusta’s economy in 2031, Medcalfe based his assessment on the national projections by the Bureau of Labor statistics. It was this way that he determined that office administration and sales occupations would continue to decline as it has since 2013, even as the number of jobs overall increase.
“Over the period of 2013 to 2031, we’re going to see, according to the projections, about 8,000 extra jobs in transport, and about 4,000 or 5,000 extra jobs in management and healthcare support services,” he said. “So that seems to be where the growth is going to be coming from over the next 10 years.”
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Regarding next year, Medcalfe discussed the possibility of recession and the indicators thereof. Addressing one such indicator, the yield curve, he noted that interest rates on 10-year securities are lower now than on two- or three-month securities.
“If long term rates are lower than the current short term interest rates, it must be because we’re expecting interest rates to fall,” he said. “So if you’re expecting interest rates to fall, it’s because we’re worried about a recession, and lower interest rates to spur the economy along.”
Another heuristic Medcalfe discussed was the Sahm Rule indicator, which goes by unemployment rate averages.
“If the three-month moving average unemployment rate is more than 0.5 percentage points higher than the low or the previous 12 months, and that’s an indicator of recession,” he said. Accounting for peaks during COVID, Medcalfe assessed that “there’s just not a lot of indicators from the unemployment data” that a recession is afoot, due to a strong labor market.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
