Akron's doing just fine.

That's not the opinion of just anyone. It's the take of John Augustine, chief investment officer of Huntington Bank's private client group. Augustine was in town Wednesday, March 22, to speak to wealthy clients of the city's largest bank.

Akron has become very important to Huntington, thanks to its 2016 acquisition of FirstMerit Corp. and its $25 billion in assets.

Augustine told clients, and then told Crain's, that Huntington is pleased to see that the Akron area is faring well and, in fact, is doing better than Northeast Ohio's other large cities — with a lower unemployment rate and prospects for more growth ahead.

"In Akron, our unemployment rate starts with a 4 (4.9%), which is where the national rate is. Cleveland, Youngstown and Canton all have rates that start with a 5, so arguably we've come back better," Augustine said after his presentation.

One reason for that, Augustine said, is the fact that the Greater Akron area has a strong and diverse mix of businesses for a city its size, including companies like Diebold Inc. and whole sectors, such as polymers and plastics, that require a lot of high-value employees in research and engineering to succeed.

"Our having higher tech industries is definitely helping us," Augustine said.

Akron was doing well just before the Great Recession landed but was hit harder by the economic downturn than most cities, Augustine said. That was evidenced by a stall in the city's downtown development that has only recently seemed to regain traction.

However, the city also has rebounded from the recession faster and with more vigor than most other places in terms of jobs and other important economic statistics, Augustine said.

He points not just to the city's relatively low unemployment rate, but the fact that it got that rate primarily by adding jobs, about 23,000 of them since 2010.

During that same time, the median value of a house in Akron increased by about 20%. Though that value is still too low at about $120,000, it's a significant improvement, Augustine said.

Augustine isn't the only economy-watcher who thinks Akron is doing well. Ned Hill, an economist with Ohio State University and former dean of Cleveland State's Levin College of Urban Affairs, thinks the city is faring well, too.

"People are discovering that Akron is a nice place now, huh?" Hill quipped, coincidentally as he was also driving to Akron to give a talk at ConxusNEO's conference about manufacturing jobs.

Like Augustine, Hill said Akron continues to benefit from having one of the top polymer and chemical engineering schools in the University of Akron — and from its proximity to a vibrant Cleveland market — but it's also benefiting from some other trends.

They include a move on the part of automakers to use more suppliers near their large assembly plants, many of which are in the Midwest and close enough to make Akron a desirable location for supply-chain participants, Hill said.

At the same time, having cheap natural gas produced locally means those same companies already have lower energy costs than many of their competitors elsewhere, Hill said.

Now the challenge will be for Akron to build upon its successes. On that front, Hill and Augustine see a few threats, but also opportunity.

On the threats front, there is the loss or potential loss of corporate headquarters and the high-paying executive jobs that go with them.

The city already lost FirstMerit to Huntington and Akron General Health System was taken over by the Cleveland Clinic, but the real risk for the future is the potential loss of FirstEnergy. Hill said he thinks the company is facing an "existential threat" from the energy markets and could be bought by another utility at some point.

That would eliminate a host of headquarter jobs, from FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones down to middle management.

"Chuck Jones alone is probably worth 40 to 50 manufacturing workers in terms of city income taxes," Hill said.

But the city has other factors that could play into its favor as well, including a resurgence of the U.S. shale-drilling industry that many hope will play out in Ohio's Utica play this year.

That would mean increased economic activity from nearby drilling for Canton and Akron, and it would likely result in still lower energy costs for local manufacturers.

"Generally, the guy with the lowest-cost energy wins" when it comes to competing in the manufacturing sector, Hill said.

Perhaps more importantly, the shale industry has sparked renewed activity around building several ethylene cracker plants in and around Ohio to make polyethylene for the plastics industry — including Shell's $6 billion cracker now in the works along the Ohio River in Pennsylvania.

The development of those plants could not only bolster the fortunes of Akron's existing plastic operations, but expand them and attract new ones as well, Augustine said.

And, finally, Akron might even get some benefit from Donald Trump becoming president — if, that is, Trump follows through on his promise to spur as much as $1 trillion in U.S. infrastructure investment.

With a federally mandated $1.6 billion sewer project in the works, Akron most certainly could use some help on the infrastructure front, and Augustine said he's hopeful the city will get it.

"The last fiscal program really focused on roads and bridges. We don't know, but we suggest that this administration will be more focused on utility-based infrastructure … So yes, that should be on the table, and we hope it is on the table," he said.

But Hill said he's watching one thing very closely in terms of gauging the prospects of manufacturing towns like Akron: the value of the U.S. dollar.

If the dollar goes up in value, that makes for tough sledding on the part of U.S. manufacturers. But if it falls against other currencies, it would give them a price advantage.

Ironically, over the past six months or so, one foreign currency important to American manufacturers has been dropping precipitously in value: the Mexican peso.

If that's not fixed, it will make it tough for the U.S. to compete with cheap labor and a cheap peso at the same time, even with protectionist measures.

"Picking a trade war with Mexico is somewhere between delusional and dumb," Hill said.