With all the volatility in the stock market, here’s what’s ahead for Whatcom’s economy
While the stock market is on a roller coaster ride heading into 2019, an economist expects Whatcom’s economy to remain fairly stable in the coming year.
At the U.S. Bank Outlook Forum held earlier this month, Hart Hodges predicted another year of 2 percent job growth and modest wage growth in Whatcom County.
A survey of business people attending the forum showed optimism on where things are going locally. Among those surveyed, 74 percent said they expect revenues to be higher in 2019, while only 10 percent expected a decline. In the same survey, 41 percent expected the economic expansion to have ended by late 2019.
That forecast was made before the stock market’s holiday volatility, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping more than 650 points on Christmas Eve, only to roar back the day after Christmas with a 1,086-point gain.
Whatever the stock market is doing, local economies are usually influenced by other factors Whatcom County tends to remain stable because of the number of large, non-cyclical employers that dominate the workforce, Hodges said in a Dec. 13 interview.
Having organizations such as St. Joseph, Lummi Nation, Western Washington University and the Bellingham School District at the top of the largest-employer list tends to lock Whatcom County into a “boring” 2 percent job growth rate. That usually means Whatcom County’s economy doesn’t go wild when there’s an upswing and the area tends to better weather downturns, he said.
“Boring feels bad in some parts of the (economic) cycle, but fantastic in other parts,” said Hodges, who is the director at the Center for Economic and Business Research at Western Washington University.
At some point, Whatcom County’s economy will shift as other parts of the Cascadia economy grows, Hodges said. If the Seattle and the Vancouver, B.C., metro areas continue to grow, there’s an expectation that companies will look at areas like Wenatchee, Bend, Ore., and Bellingham to add offices, Hodges said. How much that might happen in 2019 will depend on what happens with the national economy.
“If the economy slows down, that conversation stops,” Hodges said.
This story was originally published December 27, 2018 at 5:00 AM.
