The Richards College of Business at the University of West Georgia (UWG) has published its annual West Georgia Regional Update which shows Coweta County leading the six-county region in a number of areas such as job growth and housing starts.
Coweta County is one of six counties in the west Georgia region profiled in the UWG report. The remaining counties include Douglas, Carroll, Paulding, Polk and Haralson.
In terms of job growth between the third quarters of 2012 and 2013, only Haralson and Carroll saw a decline while Coweta led the way by a wide margin with a 7.59 percent increase. Coweta’s employment growth percentage also far outpaced the 2.24 percent seen statewide during the same period.
Coweta’s substantial uptick in job growth was led by the health sector which added 586 jobs during the period and the information sector which added 471 jobs, according to the report.
Coweta and Douglas led the region during the one-year period to add the largest number of new goods-production jobs, with most of those in manufacturing, according to UWG.
Adding to economic and job outlook, automated solutions firmYokogawa Corp. recently broke ground for a new distribution center in Newnan and is expected to employ 215 people.
Newnan will also be the home of a bottled water facility by way of California-based Niagara Bottling. The $52 million project will employ 40 workers in the 450,000 sq. ft. facility, the report said.
West Georgia’s growth in new housing permits mirrors that of the state overall and of the nation. Every county in the region has experienced growth in new permits. Coweta and Paulding experienced the largest absolute growth over the past year, adding 404 and 355 new permits, respectively. The data further indicated that the west Georgia region’s permit levels are growing faster than both the state and the nation, the report said.
