Job growth is expected to reach record in ’18
Central Ohio’s job creation is expected to keep humming in 2018.
The region’s employers likely will add 19,400 jobs this year, putting total employment at a record 1.1 million, according to economist Bill LaFayette’s annual forecast released Wednesday at the Columbus Metropolitan Club.
That growth rate of 1.8 percent is again expected to top the U.S. growth rate of 1.4 percent. Job creation nationally has started to slow as the national economy moves closer to full employment.
Last year, the central Ohio region added an estimated 21,000 jobs with a growth rate of 2.1 percent, more than twice the state average.
“This is sounding like a broken record, but central Ohio had another good year in 2017,” said LaFayette, owner of economic-consulting firm Regionomics.
This year with be the ninth in a row of job growth in central Ohio, a period when the region will have added about 200,000 jobs.
LaFayette said his 2017 forecast turned out to be low. He said some of the early numbers he used for his forecast showed a serious slowing in job creation, but those numbers turned out to be wrong.
“If I have to be wrong, I would rather be wrong this way than the other,” he said.
LaFayette’s forecast comes amid a separate outlook projecting continued modest economic growth for the state and the Midwest in 2018.
The state’s economy is expected to grow about 2 percent this year, just below the U.S. average of 2.2 percent, according to Mike Hicks, a Ball State University economist.
The state is expected to add about 40,000 jobs this year, with much of the growth in Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton, he said. Other parts of the state, such as Akron, could see some growth, but the rest of the state will continue to struggle with weak job growth.
“Jobs are following people, and people are moving to Columbus,” Hicks said.
Stephen Buser, an Ohio State University economics professor who participated with LaFayette in a panel discussion at the Metropolitan Club, said the national economic forecast looks promising in 2018, but he noted that the country might be headed into a recession. The country typically experiences a recession every six years or so, and the last recession officially ended in June 2009.
“I will say we’re long overdue for a recession,” he said.
If that happens, the tools for fighting such a downturn — lowering interest rates and increasing government spending — may not be available because interest rates are already historically low and taxes were just cut, he said.
LaFayette also said the Smart Cities initiative holds great promise for Columbus.
The region received $50 million in grants from the federal government and private sources to develop the city into the nation’s proving ground for intelligent transportation systems. The work will include driverless vehicles, road sensors that can help vehicles communicate with each other and more ways for residents to get around the city.
He said the initiative “might wind up being the most significant economic story of 2017, 2018 and beyond.”