City Talk: Area's job growth looks strong for 2024 and beyond
This is the City Talk column by Bill Dawers, a longtime contributor to the Savannah Morning News.
In the early months of construction, the site of the new Hyundai Metaplant in Bryan County looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, at least from the vantage of an occasional commuter on I-16.
Work is ongoing, of course, but the dust has settled, and the thousands of people who pass the site every day can see the sheer scale of the buildings. On a recent trip, I imagined that the plant might eventually look pretty good as the landscaping plans come to fruition.
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The ripple effects of development will become more intense in the low-density rural areas along that stretch of highway.
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Industry has been attracting more industry. Residential development will increase to meet the needs of workers. Retail development will follow. Construction on I-16 and other roads will continue for many years.
The Hyundai plant and related new industries will obviously change the region’s economic landscape as well as the physical landscape.
Over the next couple of years, we should get a much clearer sense of whether the coastal counties are prepared for the growth. Will there be enough trained employees to fill the available jobs? Will there be an adequate supply of housing? Will workers have any viable transportation options beyond every worker using their own vehicle?
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Economic development officials and others have been working diligently on those issues, but the fractured political landscape poses many challenges, as I have discussed in previous columns. Hyundai is located near the borders of four counties, each of which is home to multiple municipalities.
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The impacts on employment will probably start coming into focus by the end of 2024 or in early 2025.
According to preliminary data for December from the Georgia Department of Labor, the Savannah metro area (Chatham, Effingham and Bryan counties) had 19,700 payroll manufacturing jobs in December 2023, which was the same number as in December 2022.
Notably, the number of payroll jobs declined over the past year by more than 3% in retail trade and in transportation, warehousing and utilities. But those declines were offset in employment growth in other areas, including local government, private education and health services, and professional and business services.
The metro area had 28,100 payroll jobs in leisure and hospitality in December, an increase of 1.4% compared to a year earlier.
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All in all, 2023 was a fairly soft year for economic growth in the metro area, but payroll employment still grew by 2.1%, which is almost certainly faster than the rate of population growth. The number of initial unemployment claims in December was down about 7% compared to a year earlier, and the unadjusted unemployment rate was just 2.5%.
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Economist Michael Toma at Georgia Southern University has predicted employment growth of about 2.5% for 2024, with logistics and manufacturing as the main drivers.
The tight labor market will lure some workers off the sidelines and encourage more people to move to the region, which will in turn fuel the already-strong demand for new housing. Residential investment, which is often a leading economic indicator, could prove an important buffer against a broader economic downturn.
It could take many years, but it’s possible that manufacturing employment might eventually outpace several other broad sectors, even leisure and hospitality.
Despite the uncertainties, it seems clear that young people who enter the regional labor force in the next decade are going to have more options and opportunities than they would have had in the past, but current residents are right to be worried about the disruptions to quality of life as officials wrangle with the impending growth.
Bill Dawers can be reached via @billdawers on Twitter and CityTalkSavannah@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: City Talk: Area's job growth looks strong for 2024 and beyond
