COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS: What do you want to know about our region’s economy in 2024?

What will 2024 look like for businesses and residents of the greater Dayton area? What will be the areas of local growth and what challenges should we expect?

January’s Community Conversation on the Dayton Daily News Facebook page at noon on Jan. 31 was focused on the region’s economic outlook for 2024 and beyond.

The discussion was co-hosted by Community Impact Editor Nick Hrkman and Reporter Lynn Hulsey and featured expert panelists from around our region to help answer your questions about our local economy, including:

Editor’s Note: Below are highlights from the Community Conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. Watch the full discussion in our video.

Julie Sullivan: From an economic development perspective, our pipeline starting off the year is very strong and it includes opportunities for continued growth among several of our existing companies and then quite a few attraction projects with new organizations looking to potentially site facilities in the Dayton region. We will continue to work these projects over the course of the year. Depending on their decision, timelines, whether or not they actually come to fruition in 2024 remains to be seen. It’s still a little bit early, but the level of activity is very, very encouraging. We’re also partnering with the local communities on their readiness like Montgomery County and some of the local jurisdictions, other counties across the region, things like helping to identify potential development sites, bringing commercial buildings online, so we have places for these businesses to land. One of the other big areas that we’re focused on with so many partners across the region is to encourage companies to grow here in the region. We need to ensure that they have access to an appropriate workforce and they have the folks that they need to continue to be successful.

Morakinyo A.O. Kuti: One of the things that Central State is trying to do for workforce development we’re trying to increase workforce in the healthcare area because we all know about the disparities in health, and one of the causes of that disparity is the lack of adequate workforce, people who have the cultural competency to treat people in underserved communities. We’re looking to provide workforce training for people in specific areas of healthcare and also to provide direct services to the community. In healthcare, it all goes together. The more money you have, the better your health is, right? If you don’t have a job, then you don’t have insurance and your health suffers. So we’re trying to close the gap by boosting the healthcare workforce, both to provide service but also to increase the income of the people that are working to reduce the disparities in health.

Stephanie Keinath: A bright spot when it comes to workforce is labor force participation. Women are in the workforce at the highest rates in our history, which I think is really a testament to how they’ve personally navigated some of the challenges of the pandemic, but also how our employers have learned a lot about what it means to be a flexible workplace. How do we really meet the needs of of the current workforce, particularly those of caregivers, whether it’s children or aging families? Often that work does fall to women, so it’s about understanding that there are new models of working that have allowed folks to enter the labor force differently. On the other side of that, there’s a lot of concern now around our younger males in the workforce. Why are those numbers dropping? There’s so much more work that we can do as a community and as a country around how we make our communities more welcoming to immigrants and refugees and to make sure they’re entering the labor force in greater numbers.

Tawana Jones: Montgomery County, probably 20 plus years ago, started a program called Business First, a county regional economic development retention program. We have conversations with smaller companies as well as the larger companies. Oftentimes the larger companies come in with the big splash, they get a lot of the media, but a lot of the job creation is from the smaller companies, locally. So we work with the local communities and with the DDC, with the Chamber to have conversations with those companies to find out what their needs are. Often it is workforce. Occasionally it’s financing to look at growing, whether it’s through purchasing a piece of equipment or expanding their location.

Patrick Nugent: The economic picture is a little bit mixed in the arts and culture sector. Specifically, we have been concerned with how quickly audiences are returning after COVID. Among our three art forms, the philharmonic, the opera, and the ballet, we’re back at about 85% of our pre-COVID revenue and audience size. The new baseline is lower than it has been elsewhere. All of us have been have been worried about this and struggling with it a little bit. Now, why should anyone care about the opera and the philharmonic? I’ve got to answer that question. The understanding that people have of quality of life in the community is very heavily dependent on their perception of the richness of the arts and culture scene, even if they never set foot in a concert or a museum. This cannot be overestimated. A decade ago, during the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, Dayton and Wright-Patterson were trying to attract a large number of civilian professionals and employees to come here. As they surveyed them for what they were looking for in terms of quality of life, there were three things. Number one is high quality, affordable housing. Number two was high quality schools. Number three was the rich and vibrant arts and culture scene. I was in a discussion recently with with some business leaders, and we were talking about this topic and one of them said, you know, even if we never set foot in a venue or event, we’re still benefiting because we we sell the quality of life in Dayton when we’re trying to attract people to come here. So we have a really important role to play in the ability to attract and retain workforce. However, unlike Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, the arts and culture here receive a tiny, tiny amount of public support for what we do. There is almost no government funding going into the arts and culture in Montgomery County in comparison with with the 3C’s. This means that our burden in terms of having to raise philanthropy is even higher, and that the risk is is higher. So it’s important for us as arts and culture leaders to get the community to understand the extent to which business is already benefiting.