It is almost impossible today for an economic report to avoid showing the impact of the recession on a county or region. That was the case in the West Georgia Regional Update report released recently by the University of West Georgia. The summer 2011 study focused on issues in the five-county region such as income, housing and recovery.
The report was prepared by the Richards College of Business at the University of West Georgia. The report covers the five-county area that includes Coweta, Carroll, Douglas, Haralson and Paulding counties.
One focus area in the study included the region’s unemployment. Reporting on the jobless situation through June, the study noted that Coweta had the lowest rate of the five counties. That said, the employment situation is far less than desirable.
“One of the chief difficulties in moving beyond the 2007-2009 recession is the region’s inability to quickly re-employ those workers who have lost their jobs. Though unemployment rates have not increased substantially, they have also not shown any considerable progress since breaking into the double-digits in the first half of 2009,” the report said.
That said, the report also noted that for the West Georgia region as a whole employment growth remains a mixed bag.
Data shows that Coweta and Haralson counties have experienced job growth in the past year with Coweta seeing a 1.7 percent increase. Carroll, Douglas and Paulding counties, on the other hand, have seen job losses.
Yet another aspect of the report dealt with housing and income.
In terms of per capita personal income (PCPI), Coweta and Douglas both saw decreases between 2001-2009 while Haralson, Carroll and Paulding counties saw increases. The PCPI in Coweta decreased by $2,280 during the period, according to the report.
The study showed that Coweta has experienced a degree of “upward movement in new housing permits; however, current data have deflated hopes of short-term growth continuing into a longer-term trend.”
There were approximately 225 single-family home permits issued in Coweta from June 2009 through June 2010. That number fell to approximately 130 during the same period from June 2010 to June 2011.
In another study component, the report noted some of the issues throughout the region, state and nation pertaining to home foreclosures.
“Foreclosures at the state level, have worsened as compared with the nation over the past two months. At the national level, foreclosures have improved slightly from one foreclosure for every 593 housing units, to one in every 611. Georgia’s foreclosures have moved in the opposite direction.
From April to July, Georgia saw its foreclosures increase from one foreclosure for every 479 housing units, to one in 355, an increase of 34.9 percent in two months. Within the West Georgia Region, only Coweta County (at 1 in 433 homes) has a lower foreclosure rate than the state’s overall rate.
Despite a worsening of Douglas County’s foreclosure rate, Paulding has replaced Douglas as the county with the highest rate of foreclosures in the region, going from one foreclosure in every 339 units in April to one in every 204 housing units in July,” the report said.
The report also laid out the parameters by which the West Georgia region’s overall housing market can recover.
“For West Georgia’s housing market to start a recovery, jobs and incomes will have to recover first; however, with unemployment rates for all counties in the region trending sideways, initial unemployment claims rising again and renewed worries in the world financial markets, the prospect of a housing recover seems to be moving further away at present,” the study said.
