Just as in politics, it can be argued that all economics is local. Or, as President Harry Truman put it, “It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.”
With the national economy sending mixed signals — inflation is troubling consumers, but employment remains high — experts took a promising view of the local economy last week at The Columbian’s Economic Forecast Breakfast.
“You’ve done remarkably well,” said Matthew Gardner, Windemere Real Estate’s chief economist. People are coming from California and from the Oregon side of the Columbia River, and “they’re bringing money and spending it.” Gardner noted that Clark County had more newcomers last year than any county in the state, spurring economic growth and vitality. As The Columbian surmised: “If the U.S. economy is a workhorse, the local economy is a racehorse.”
Many local residents and governments have effectively weathered the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic. But as we continue to prepare for the future, it is essential to recognize the inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
Scott Bailey, regional economist for the state Employment Security Department, says that when the pandemic hit, minority groups and less-educated workers proportionally lost more jobs than college-educated whites. Even in recovery, wage gaps persist between men and women, and between white workers and people of color.
That is not unique to Clark County. Last month, Equilar reported that CEOs of the nation’s largest corporations typically earned 254 more times than the average worker in 2021 — an increase from the previous year. Median compensation for those CEOs was $20 million, a 31 percent increase from 2020, thanks largely to jumps in stock awards and cash bonuses.
CEO compensation does not represent the template for business leaders throughout the economy. These are the heads of the largest companies, overseeing an economic model that is foreign to small businesses and mom-and-pop operations. But it does reflect a system that in the long run has deleterious effects on the economy.
As now-President Joe Biden noted during the 2020 campaign, the pandemic recovery has been K-shaped, with wealth growing for those at the top and declining for the rest of us. “Millionaires and billionaires, in the middle of the COVID crisis, have done very well,” Biden said. “The people who have lost their jobs are the people who have been on the front lines.”
Those people on the front lines are particularly concerned with job security and inflation that includes soaring gas prices. Nationally — and locally — they can find solace in the fact that there remain more available jobs than people willing to fill them, which is one sign of a robust economy.
In Clark County, that economy has been boosted by decades of cultivating diverse businesses. What three decades ago was largely an industrial community has transformed to embrace corporate headquarters, high-tech manufacturing, innovative startups, tourism, service industries and a wide variety of economic sectors.
That has been essential to the region’s ability to withstand the economic impact of the pandemic. It also has been essential to attracting newcomers that give additional momentum to positive economic trends.
According to people who make a living watching those trends, Clark County is prepared for a robust economic future.
