December 13, 2013 / Modified dec 13, 2013 4:48 p.m.

Forecast: Tucson Recession Jobs Lost Recovered by 2016

City added 6,000 jobs in past year in what economists point to as sign of improvement, with pace to continue.

Listen:

The Tucson economy added about 6,000 jobs in the past year, in what economists point to as a sign that the local economy is growing at a rate similar to national economic growth.

That pace is expected to continue into 2014, said George Hammond, associate director of the Economic and Business Research Center at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management.

"I actually think that growth is not just going to continue, it’s going to accelerate over the next couple of years," Hammond said.

The economy is adding jobs, people are making more, and the housing market is recovering from the recession, he said. The local job growth rate is about two percent, he said.

"That’s still below the roughly three percent average job growth rate that we experienced before the recession began," he said. "We’re growing at a rate that’s lower than our average growth rate during the 30 years before the great recession.”

Hammond said he expects the local economy to gain back all the jobs lost in the recession by 2016.

“We will see rising income growth over the next couple of years. Personal income growth, I think, will actually accelerate pretty significantly in 2014," Hammond said in an annual economic forecast presentation.

The industries poised to continue growing in the next few years include health care, business services, such as engineering and computer science, along with call centers and jobs in leisure and hospitality.

"We’re adding not just jobs, but population is growing, income is growing, and the housing market is also rebounding locally,” he said. “We’re headed towards job growth rates in the neighborhood of two percent, maybe a little bit above...that’ll be close to the national growth rate that is expected over the next couple of years."

By posting comments, you agree to our
AZPM encourages comments, but comments that contain profanity, unrelated information, threats, libel, defamatory statements, obscenities, pornography or that violate the law are not allowed. Comments that promote commercial products or services are not allowed. Comments in violation of this policy will be removed. Continued posting of comments that violate this policy will result in the commenter being banned from the site.

By submitting your comments, you hereby give AZPM the right to post your comments and potentially use them in any other form of media operated by this institution.
AZPM is a service of the University of Arizona and our broadcast stations are licensed to the Arizona Board of Regents who hold the trademarks for Arizona Public Media and AZPM. We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples.
The University of Arizona