Mike Cronin

mcronin@citizen-times.com

Among U.S. metro areas, Asheville is like a factory that makes jobs.

The region comprising Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Madison counties has recorded job growth for 69 consecutive months – 70 if one counts preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That employment production places Asheville in the top 16 percent of the nation’s metros. Only 61 of 387 total metro areas can claim streaks as long.

Figures are based on a comparison of each month’s job totals with the same month the year before.

In North Carolina, only Charlotte and Raleigh match Asheville.

“Ten to 15 years ago, I don’t think we’d be having a discussion that included Asheville with as diversified economies as Charlotte and Raleigh,” said Rick Kaglic, a senior regional economist for the Charlotte branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

Relevant numbers

Perhaps most salient is Asheville’s private sector job growth percentage from April 2010 through April 2016, said Jeff DeBellis, manager of economic and policy analysis for the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

That the metro recorded 16 percent private sector job growth during those six years “is a positive sign,” DeBellis said.

Particularly when the national and state private sector job growth percentages were lower, at 13.3 percent and 14.5 percent, respectively, in that span.

Asheville’s job increases in the private sector also impressed Kaglic.

“Government is typically a stabilizing force,” Kaglic said. “But when looking at Asheville’s government sector numbers, they’re almost steadily negative since the middle of 2011.”

Though government net job growth was 2,900 from July 2010 through May – ranking fifth among Asheville’s job-creating sectors – the annual average was negative during the past 69 months.

The metro lost an annual average of about 414 government jobs, according to state commerce department data.

A majority of those existed in K-12 public-school systems, said Tom Tveidt, a research economist who owns SYNEVA Economics LLC, a consulting firm in Asheville that focuses on local and regional analysis.

Western North Carolina’s robust private sector also indicates that its discrete industries “don’t walk in lockstep – don’t share the same markets, customers, etc. – with one another,” said Tveidt, who also is past chair of The Council for Community and Economic Research, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization.

Another “plus for Asheville” is that professional and business services, which offers high-wage jobs, is the fastest-growing industry, DeBellis said.

With the lowest unemployment in the state, at 3.9 percent in April, and a population of relatively highly educated people, “the outlook for Asheville is really good,” DeBellis said.

The 42.2 percent of Asheville residents who hold an associate’s degree or above is greater than the national average of 38.2 percent, said Richard Beem Jr., an economist at the Philadelphia-based business consulting and analysis firm.

A diversifying economy

That Asheville’s economy is becoming more broad-based may be seen in the sectors leading job growth.

The leisure and hospitality industry, for example, long viewed and criticized as the primary engine of WNC’s development, ranks fourth in job creation from August 2010 through May 2016, bureau statistics show.

Total jobs during that span increased by 3,200, from 23,700 to 26,900.

The education and health services; professional and business services; and trade, transportation and utilities sectors also outperformed tourism in that time period.

Education and health services ballooned by 5,800 jobs, from 30,500 to 36,300.

Still, leisure and hospitality accounted for 14.6 percent of Asheville’s total payrolls last year, said IHS economist Beem.

“The industry mix remains tilted” – 10.7 percent of total payrolls is leisure and hospitality’s national average – “but sizeable growth in well-paying industries bodes well for Asheville,” Beem said.

Education and health services leapt to 19.3 percent of total payrolls in 2015 from 13.5 percent in 2000.

And though manufacturing continues to decline, it still made up about 11 percent of total payrolls last year. It represented 17.2 percent in 2000.

But the Fed’s Kaglic pointed out that Asheville’s tourism sector has improved the metro’s economic vitality because it’s become more year-round rather than merely seasonal.

“There are more jobs in leisure and hospitality in October, November and December than before,” he said.

Stephanie Brown, executive director of the Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau, argued Buncombe County’s reinvestment of the 6 percent “occupancy tax into destination has created sustained growth.”

Visitors coming to the area work as a type of job generator in themselves, said James F. Smith, chief economist at Asheville-based Parsec Financial Inc., a wealth-management advising company.

“Many people come here for a visit for business, pleasure or both, and then bring a business here later,” said Smith, who also is an elected Fellow of the National Association for Business Economics and has been an adjunct professor at Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC Chapel Hill since 1988.

“Asheville is not defying the national trend, it is one of the areas leading it,” he said.

“Steady growth at a sustainable pace, which is what (Asheville) has been experiencing for nearly six years now is ‘economic nirvana.’”

SYNEVA’s Tveidt agreed.

“I would imagine given the choice, most businesses would rather be in an economy with dependable, steady growth,” Tveidt said.

“There’s less risk.”

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