Yet, they can give you a good idea of what is going on right under your nose, the state of the national economy and the local economy. And there’s plenty of stats out there to mine.
All you have to do is wade through some government data.
Say what you want about the various government bureaucracies, but some of them do an excellent job of gathering crucial data on the health of the economy.
Last week, one of these offices, the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Department of Labor issued its quarterly report on personal income.
The BEA defines personal income as “income received by all persons from all sources.” That means it is the sum of all net earnings of a person, including rental income, interest, dividends as well as wages and salary. It also counts such transfers of unemployment insurance.
The recent report made news mostly because it was so dismal. Nationwide, the measure fell 1.8 percent in 2009. But the report was not a study of every nook and cranny in the country, rather it included all the 366 so-called Metro-politan Statistical Areas. These range from greater Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta to Calhoun County, known to the BEA as the Anniston-Oxford MSA.
The BEA says an MSA is a “geographic area consisting of a large population nucleus together with adjacent com-munities having a high degree of economic and social integration with the nucleus.”
Sounds like Anniston-Oxford.
Anyway, the news was not happy for lots of places and that included ours. It seems personal income in the Annis-ton-Oxford MSA fell 0.6 percent, while the closely linked per-capita income fell 1.2 percent.
Just numbers, right? Yes, but tease them a little and you begin to learn more. Nationally, for example, the report tells us that 223 MSAs saw a fall-off in personal income, while nine were unchanged and 134 managed an improvement.
However, of those 134 that did well, the increase in 57 was attributed almost solely to the government sector, the military and the federal government.
In fact, of those 134, only five MSAs — Kennewick, Wash., Cumberland, Md., Morgantown, W.Va., Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Ithaca, N.Y. — managed that increase because of the private sector.
Without Uncle Sam, we would be looking at 361 out of 366 MSAs showing flat or negative growth in personal in-come.
That suggests whatever kind of recovery we may be experiencing is for the most part artificial.
That plays into our MSA as well. We aren’t as bad off as the national average, but we have a key player to thank for that. As most know, without the Anniston Army Depot, we would be in even deeper statistical purgatory. And that goes for unemployment as well.
“The depot has a lot to do with those numbers not being worse,” said Pat Shaddix, the director of the Center for Economic Development at Jacksonville State University.
“There are 7,000-plus civilian and military jobs out there at that facility,” he said. “That is a pretty stabilizing influ-ence in this economy.”
Although Shaddix also credits Honda and the expansion of retail in Oxford with cushioning the blow locally, it is the depot that is most important right now.
“If you take away the jobs at that depot away,” he added, “then you are going to knock this place for a loop.”
According to that other font of useful information on the state of the economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, also at the Department of Labor, the June unemployment rate for the Anniston-Oxford MSA was at 10 percent, unchanged from May, but down from its high of 11.7 in January. That’s a crushingly brutal increase from say, April 2007, when unemployment in the MSA was steady at 2.8 percent.
During all of 2009, the same period of the study on personal income, unemployment in the Anniston-Oxford MSA measured 10.1 percent.
It could be worse, of course, and again, we’ve got the depot to thank in large part.
To get an idea of how bad things can get, have a look at Atlanta, a place hit particularly hard by the recession, where personal income fell 3.3 percent in 2009. Out in western Texas, the people of Midland saw their personal income fall 6.6 percent. Of course, we could do much better, as anyone without a job would quickly tell you. It is with a bit of envy, then, that we look at Fayetteville, N.C., where personal income went up 6.6 percent, thanks in large part to the military presence around the city.
So, yes, statistics can be dreadfully boring, but they can also help paint a more accurate picture of an economy. Clearly, as the report says, we’re struggling. But things could be a lot worse.
Better things are happening in Detroit these days. General Motors reported robust profits in the second quarter, the second in a row. The news helped the automaker position itself for an initial public offering that should go a long way towards settling the company’s debt with the American people.
If you’ll remember, GM was the recipient of a government-sponsored bailout to the tune of $50 billion. It has al-ready paid back $6.7 billion, but GM execs are determined to get out from under government ownership as soon as possible.
The strange news, of course, was that this was followed up by the announcement that GM’s current CEO, Edward Whitacre, would be stepping down in a few months. Lots of industry watchers didn’t like that too much, seeing as how GM has had three CEOs in less than two years. The other side of the argument, though, is that Whitacre was the Obama administration’s pick to lead the failing company as part of the government bailout. Whitacre stepping aside, in other words, helps the company exorcise that bad phrase “Government Motors.”
Ford, too had some good earnings news, so good in fact that the chairman, Bill Ford Jr., finally got a paycheck, his first since 2005.
Ford avoided bankruptcy when the other giants stumbled, and you might say Bill Ford gets a lot of credit for that.
He’s a Ford, you see, so he’s got some in the bank. Also, waiting a few years to draw a check is apparently going to pay off in a big way. He’ll be paid $4 million in salary and $11 million in stock options. Not bad.
The Birmingham News did a spread last week on the new Grand River outlet mall scheduled to open in late October.
The mall picked up nearly a dozen new tenants recently. Add that to the already-signed-up and Grand River has a to-tal of 44 retailers, including Talbots, Aeropostale, Bose, Izod and Banana Republic
The new mall’s location, across from the giant Bass Pro Shop, at the intersection of Interstate 20 and U.S. 78, just in the edge of Jefferson County, makes it a little closer to Anniston-Oxford than Birmingham proper and about 20 miles closer to the Arbor Place Mall in Douglasville, Ga.
That’s not nearly as close, though, as the Oxford Exchange, a place that has been holding its own so far.
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John Fleming is The Star’s editor at large. Contact him at johnfleming2005@bellsouth.net.
