Columbus.

• Author: Smith, James C.

As we look ahead to 2004, the nation is emerging from a different kind of recession. That difference is going to have an important impact on Columbus and Bartholomew County.

The national economic recovery that began in late 2001 has not produced a big upswing in employment. A good explanation for this jobless recovery came out of a study this past summer by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Its economists analyzed postwar recessions and found two kinds of job loss during recessions. Typically, a drop in demand triggers a recession and firms cut employment as a means to reduce capacity temporarily. Employees laid off due to lack of demand are typically rehired soon after demand picks up in the recovery.

A different kind of job loss occurs when firms simply eliminate jobs. The jobs disappear due to productivity gains, shifting jobs to other locations, or subcontracting. This "structural" employment decline typically does not recover when the economy picks up. The jobs are gone forever.

The 2000 to 2001 recession was not a demand-driven recession. In fact, consumer demand remained strong all through it. So the job losses we saw were predominantly structural rather than driven by demand. Many of these jobs won't come back.

The structural job loss effects will show up in a slow recovery in Columbus and Bartholomew County. Employment here did not plummet during the recession. In fact, the county unemployment rate mostly stayed below 4.5 percent and only briefly pushed above 5 percent (see Figure 1).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

A factor protecting the local economy from widespread unemployment is the increasing diversity of the economic landscape. Ten years ago, more than 40 percent of all jobs in Bartholomew County were in manufacturing. Today that figure is about 35 percent. The health care sector now provides 13 percent of the jobs in the county, nearly double its share from ten years ago. Employment in banking and finance also has grown, now accounting for more than 3 percent of all jobs.

Our conclusion is that a large portion of the decline in manufacturing employment during the recent recession was structural and will not soon return. Therefore, our overall employment forecast is for a very slow rise in employment during 2004, adding perhaps three hundred jobs in the county. The county unemployment rate is expected to remain above...