Economy looks 'very bullish'

The economy is starting to look up, according to several economic experts at Thursday’s Economic Outlook Tour in Saratoga.

Several local business members gathered at the Platte Valley Community Center to listen to Dr. Scott Anderson, Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist for Bank of the West, discuss national and global economic outlook for this year.

Saying his job for Bank of the West consists of using his knowledge to “predict the future” economically, Anderson gave several assessments of the macroeconomic status of the world.

“We are projecting a 2.7 percent growth in the U.S. economy this year,” Anderson said. “That is even better than it was last year.”

Anderson said, for the most part, things are going to economically improve in almost all areas. One area in particular that will see a benefit to local businesses is increased consumer spending power.

“We have a consumer that is looking much better, we have businesses that are in excellent financial position to go out there and join the economic recovery and participate in it fully. We are optimistic; those are two of the more important components of the economy,” Anderson said.

He added that banks are lending to businesses are at a record rate.

Two areas that continue to be an issue are income inequality and the housing market, Anderson said. Though the economy is currently growing, most of that growth is happening for the top 5 percent wealthy of the population.

“We really do see a widening gap in terms of who is benefiting from the economic growth, and one way to look at that is through income statistics and growth,” Anderson said. “Since 2008, since the recession, most households, 95 percent of all American households have lost ground … that’s why when you ask some people ‘are you better off than you were 10 years ago,’ a lot of people are saying ‘we are still in a recession. I feel like I am working harder and harder and not gaining any ground.’”

Anderson contributes the hardship of 95 percent of the families to the weak labor market, but he predicts “that is about to end.”

The housing market is still “on the mend” according to Anderson. The housing bubble of the late 2000s is starting to get better, but is still not at pre-recession numbers.

“We knew that this was going to be the last setback of the economy that we would have to fix,” Anderson said. “The good news is we don’t build as many houses as we used to … even though home building may slow down this year, it’s not going to be as big of an impact on our GDP growth.”

Anderson said he has been a realist when it comes to the market, stating he was one of the first to predict a recession and the first to predict the recovery. He said the economy, in the future, looks “very bullish”.

“Because of the consumer, we are in a better position to maintain a growth rate,” Anderson said.

Locally, Dr. Anne Alexander, director of the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Wyoming and Associate Dean with the Outreach program, said in her speech that, in general, the state is experiencing an economic boom.

“As the recession came along and coming towards us, we started watching unemployment getting worse and worse across the county and asking ‘is this going to hit us’,” Alexander said. “But for the most part, we just rode out the storm.”

Alexander said the primary reason for Wyoming’s sustainability are the jobs created by energy.

“Our unemployment rate is still fairly low. Our highest unemployment rate, during the recession, was about 7.4 percent. We came close to getting to 9 percent in Sweetwater and Campbell County, but it quickly went up and quickly went right back down again,” she said.

Alexander said Wyoming is sitting at around 4 percent unemployment, which is more than 2 percent lower than the national average.

“There is a lot of variability across the state with unemployment,” she said. “We don’t have any county above 10 percent … but the highest we have are around 6 to 6.9-percent [unemployment].”

Alexander said the best unemployment numbers were in Converse and Sublette counties. The highest unemployment rate tends to alternate between Lincoln, Fremont and Uinta Counties.

She said that Carbon County’s unemployment numbers are doing “fairly well.”

Alexander stressed there are some very bright spots throughout the state, and is partly due to the unique industries in individual counties.

“We are not all Converse County, we don’t all have these giant coal mines,” Alexander. “We don’t all have F.E. Warren Air Force base, we don’t all have the University of Wyoming. We all have different microcosms in the economy. At the same time, we are all in this together.”

Overall, Alexander said she is fairly optimistic about Wyoming’s economic future.