Local jobless numbers show slow recovery

Greg Webb Weatherford Democrat

WEATHERFORD — The December unemployment rate for the city of Weatherford improved, compared to November. It was unchanged for Parker County and rose on the national and state level. The mixed bag of economic news continues to leave local residents in a state of confusion. Are we still in a recession? Are we recovering? Is the economy getting any better?

We deal with a broad spectrum of businesses on a daily basis, there does not seem to be a consensus on whether the local economy is improving or not. Some businesses are entrenched, withdrawn and content to ride out the nagging recession for as long as it takes. Others are taking advantage of the opportunity to gain market share by being aggressive and driving customers to the door while the economy is in a down cycle.

Around town we’ve seen a number of businesses — particularly restaurants — close up shop in recent months. While each has had its own reason for closing, all of them went out because the local economy could not help them overcome other shortfalls. Most small businesses operate on razor thin margins, even the established ones. When times get tough on the economic front, they go into the red quickly and often cannot hang on long enough for the economy to turn around.

It’s more important than ever for businesses to invest in marketing. More often than not, the ones that close did not invest in driving new traffic to the door. Now is certainly not the time to hunker down and ride it out. For starters, this recession shows no signs of going away anytime soon — regardless of what the national experts say.

In many parts of the country, the economy has been bad for a long time. Technically, a recession is two consecutive quarters (six months) of negative growth. Obviously, those states have cycled through the bad quarters and are “growing” compared to where they where in 2008 and 2009.

The truth is, economists and politicians can spin the numbers any way they want. They can make taxes seem higher than they really are, if the agenda is tax cuts. They also break down a $200 annual increase in your property tax bill to a small amount — per $100 in assessed value, of course — to float a local tax increase.

Keeping economic news in perspective is a tough task for the average taxpayer. We prefer specific government reports — the kind that are figured the same way every month and depend on empirical data. The jobless, or unemployment rate is always the best place to start. The fourth month average, covering the months of September through December, shows little or no improvement on the national and state levels, but marked improvement in Parker County and the city of Weatherford.

Unemployment in the city of Weatherford has dropped more than a full percentage point — down to 7.1 percent — from its high of 8.3 percent in July 2009. That’s good news, regardless of context, and shows a steady, albeit slow, recovery on the employment front. The same can be said of Parker County, where unemployment peaked at 8.5 percent in August, but has improved steadily to 7.3 percent at the end of 2009.

While we appear to be on a slow road to recovery, it’s hard to declare what recovery actually would be. The jobless rate in January 2009 was 5.8 percent in Weatherford and 6.2 percent in Parker County. Right now, everyone would call that a victory.

In the meantime, only the aggressive businesses will survive this downturn.



— Steve Boggs