By comparison, the Cincinnati metro area is expected to recover the more than 70,000 jobs it lost after its pre-recession peak in the fourth quarter of 2007 by the first quarter next year. Meanwhile, Springfield area jobs could return to their pre-recession peak as soon as the end of this month, according to forecasts covering more than 366 metro areas.
U.S. employment is already back to pre-recession levels, based on preliminary figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Dayton is not recovering as fast as the nation and some other metropolitan areas, but that’s because the recession was so harsh in Dayton that it will take even longer for the metro to get back to pre-recession levels,” said Karl Kuykendall, a regional economist for IHS Global Insight, which prepared the report. “It’s not just a matter of Dayton recovering from the 2008 recession, the area actually never recovered, employment-wise, from the 2001 recession.”
Employment in the Dayton area declined each year from 2001 to 2010 before showing a net gain in 2011, according to Kuykendall.
Economic growth — which drives hiring — is expected to expand in the local area at about 2 percent a year through 2020 — the fastest growth rate in the area since the mid-1990s, according to the report. But the pace of growth isn’t strong enough to quickly pull Dayton out of the jobs hole, Kuykendall added.
“Things aren’t going to change overnight,” he said, blaming the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs during the recession for the gloomy forecast in Dayton. “The metro is still heavily reliant on manufacturing, and those jobs haven’t come back in a meaningful way in Dayton.”
Still, some local economists and development officials are skeptical of the forecast, mainly because it doesn’t account for unforeseen events could change local labor market conditions dramatically.
“I would say you want to take this report with a very large grain of salt,” said James Brock, an economics professor at Miami University. “A lot does change, and a lot will change over the next 10 years. Nobody really has a crystal ball.”
Brock pointed to recent development announcements from Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. and Chinese auto glass maker, Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co. as evidence that the employment picture can change quickly. The companies plan to establish warehouse and manufacturing operations in the Dayton area, creating nearly 2,000 jobs over the next two years.
“Nobody saw that coming, yet there you have it,” Brock said, adding that Dayton is well positioned for future job growth.
“Dayton is smack at the intersection of two major interstates (I-70 and I-75), and has an advantage in terms of location, transportation, logistics and warehousing,” he said. “Couple that with the fact that lots of companies are starting to bring operations back home to the U.S., and that’s going to increase the importance of logistics and transportation as well as some manufacturing that may come back that went away 10 or 20 years ago.”
In addition, Dayton has made strides in diversifying its economy and is not as reliant on manufacturing as it once was, which should bode well for future job growth, according to Joel Ivers, vice president of the entrepreneurial development arm of The Dayton Development Coalition known as Accelerant.
The group was recently awarded $3 million in matching funds from the Ohio Third Frontier Commission for a seed-stage venture capital fund. The fund is designed to stimulate start-up activity and job growth in the region by investing primarily in Dayton-area technology businesses with high-growth potential.
“We have a lot of start-up hopes for the companies that the Accelerant fund invests in,” Ivers said, noting that his team is planning to invest in 20 to 25 start-ups over the next two to three years.
Most of the companies will start with a handful of employees and may expand to a few dozen once they get off the ground, Ivers added, but those estimates don’t include indirect employment by firms supporting the start-ups.
“There will be lots of indirect jobs, so the employment numbers can get a lot larger than the direct number quickly,” he said. “A decade from now, the numbers could be significant.”
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