Business activity in the Austin area is poised to boom in 2022 and beyond after the local economy shrugged off the debilitating grip of the coronavirus pandemic over the past year and rebounded strongly, economists said.

Speaking during an economic forecasting event sponsored by the Austin Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, they said the region's diverse and growing base of employers, its skilled workforce and its acclaimed quality of life will fuel substantial gains going forward.

"You should be particularly happy with the outlook" heading into 2022, said Joe Quinlan, a Bank of America managing director who spoke remotely from his New York office to the local business leaders in attendance.

Austin has "a very attractive backdrop for more growth," Quinlan said. “You are attracting people (and) you are attracting corporations" to the metro area.

Jon Hockenyos, an Austin-based economist who also spoke Wednesday, said he views the Austin area as "being in the early stages of a growth surge."

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Changes to corporate practices and workforce preferences driven by the coronavirus pandemic have "only enhanced the things that made us the (economic) star we were," Hockenyos said. "I think Austin is going to be one of the great global cities of the 21st century — I firmly believe that.”

Both he and Quinlan said the national economy has been recovering from last year's pandemic-induced tailspin as well and appears to be in good shape for continued gains in 2022.

Quinlan said he expects U.S. gross domestic product — the value of all goods and services — to climb 4% next year, which is considered a solid increase.

The Federal Reserve is forecasting 3.8% growth in U.S. gross domestic product next year, after an anticipated 5.9% gain this year amid the ongoing recovery from the pandemic. The U.S. economy, as measured by gross domestic product, contracted by 3.5% in 2020 during the initial shock of the pandemic.

Neither Quinlan nor Hockenyos provided a forecast for growth in Austin-area gross domestic product next year, although both said the figure will be outpace the national number.

Impacts on Austin's economic future

The main constraints on the Austin-area economy over the next few years are likely to be its ongoing housing shortage, its congested transportation network and its increasingly stretched workforce, Hockenyos said.

“Housing and labor force are the two big screaming issues," he said. "We are in danger of pricing out our workforce from being able to live within spitting distance of where they work."

He also said "a substantial volume of people in Austin remain under-employed" because they lack the training to benefit from the region's economic surge — or to help alleviate the huge demand among Austin-area employers for skilled workers.

"We are leaving people behind," Hockenyos said. "We need to invest in that asset that will then ultimately make the foundation here that much stronger."

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By a variety of measures, the economy of the Austin area has fully recovered in recent months from the pandemic-induced downturn.

More people are working in the metro area than ever, record numbers of local job openings are being advertised online and the region's unadjusted unemployment rate is at a paltry 3.5% — a figure generally considered at or below ordinary churn.

As of July, the Austin metro area had recovered all of the estimated 140,000 jobs it lost amid the initial shock of the pandemic early last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. In addition, Austin-area job growth has been accelerating, increasing at an annualized rate of 10% in the third quarter this year — for a net gain of 28,505 jobs — compared with a combined 4.9% growth rate in the first and second quarters.

The local business climate has been boosted over the past 12 to 18 months by a number of major corporate developments in the region.

Among them, automaker Tesla is building a $1.1 billion manufacturing facility in Travis County — and the company announced last month that it's moving its headquarters to Austin. In addition, tech giant Samsung has said it's considering sites in Austin and Taylor for a $17 billion semiconductor factory, software giant Oracle announced Austin as the new location for its corporate headquarters, and construction is continuing on Apple's $1 billion office campus on West Parmer Lane.

Hockenyos said that Tesla's embrace of the region has been particularly important because it has put Central Texas on the map as a potential location for other high-tech manufacturers.

"There are lots of people in and around that space that are suddenly looking at Austin because Tesla is such a signal company," he said. "Tesla has sent the message out there for advanced manufacturing firms — come on in, the water’s fine in Austin."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Experts say economic boom likely coming in 2022 and beyond for Austin