Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 7, 1994 TAG: 9401070193
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The VEC's November employment numbers released Thursday paint the most optimistic view of the state's economy in three years. In one category in Roanoke, the employment figures were the best ever seen.
Let's wade through the report:
The 129,900 nonfarm jobs in the Roanoke area in November set a record, VEC senior economist Bill Mezger reports. The previous best was 128,700 nonfarm workers in November 1990.
Statewide, nonfarm employment of just over 2.9 million was at its highest level in three years.
The average work week for hourly manufacturing workers was 41.9 hours - that's the most overtime piled up by production workers in 20 years. Better yet, Mezger said those workers were busy riveting heavy machinery, churning out aluminum and steel or making auto parts.
"So most of the producers of heavy equipment must be getting a lot of orders," he said.
Hollins College economist Mary Houska predicted that overtime should soon translate into even better news: more jobs. "If they're paying people overtime," Houska said, "that means sometime in the future we can expect employers to start hiring more people."
And that's not all. The number of out-of-work people in Virginia - 160,100 - hasn't been lower in three years. That made the state's 4.9 percent unemployment rate a full percentage point lower than last year's and well below the 6.1 percent national average.
In Western Virginia, tiny Bland County's unemployment rate dropped to 2.8 percent - from 4.1 percent - giving it the fourth-lowest rate in the state.
So what's responsible for the rosy numbers? Houska and Mezger name several things. Normally, unemployment rates will jump slightly from October to November, because people look for extra work around the holidays. But this year, Mezger said, stores hired seasonal help earlier in November, boosting the numbers.
In a larger sense, Houska said this may just be a sign that Virginia's economy is starting to make a comeback after the national economy had already started to recover.
Since the recession of 1990 and 1991 didn't end with an obvious break, people hesitated a long time to take advantage of low interest rates for loans. Now, people are gaining confidence that the country won't slip back into a recession.
"I think businesses and consumers are saying, `Gee, maybe this is just a window of opportunity, and we're going to have to jump; we can buy a house, a car, a computer or invest in equipment, because we can get it cheaply,' " Houska said.
by CNB