3/20/08
Clarendon County looking good according to SLRCOG
By Jerriod Grizzle

JERRIOD GRIZZLEv/Manning Times

Speaker Dr. Don Schunk (left) shares a laugh with Executive Director Jim Darby and Research Analyst Bruce Mills at Monday’s Santee-Lynches Regional Council on Governments Economic Forecast Conference.

According to economists, 2008 and 2009 may be flat years for the four county region but Clarendon County may have just beat those signs. After posting record totals in economic indicators in 2005 and 2006, the region, including Clarendon, Kershaw, Lee and Sumter Counties had a relatively flat year in 2007 according to Dr. Don Schunk of the BB&T Center for Economic and Community Development at Coastal Carolina University.

Schunk spoke Monday at the Santee-Lynches Regional Council of Governments at the SLRCOG Economic Forecast Conference for 2008-2009.

His opinion of the economy for the region seemed to be quite optimistic despite some of the numbers.

“This seems to be a very stagnate year for the economy because of the interest rate cuts and the housing market slump, but I think in all areas of the economy you might just find that 2009 will have a little bit of a climb,” he said.

Housing construction and non-residential construction in the region fell last year after two very solid years starting in 2006. Clarendon County went against the national and state downward trend with a new development of 84 condominiums near Lake Marion that helped the county permit totals far exceed the 2006 numbers.

One point of good news for the region was the unemployment rate, which dipped last year for the second straight year in a row after several consecutive years of increasing.

However, Schunk said that people should not read too much into this statistic.

“When people look at the economy they always look at unemployment rates. Its an easy number but it involves a little more than just numbers,” he said.

Schunk said that a lot of the downward trends in unemployment are the moving around of people.

“If people can’t find a job they drop out of the workforce or move away and that does drive down your unemployment but not the kind of thing you want to happen,” he said. According to a 2006 regional estimate of population the county again beat the numbers with an actual climb in population estimated at over 33,000. That is a two percent increase from the last census in 2000.

The region lost over 6,000 manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2007.

Clarendon County had 1,223 people unemployed in 2006 with a slight change of negative eight percent in 2007.

The region did hit an all time high in gross sales at $3.93 billion. That is a 9.5 percent from 2006. The growth was largely due to gas prices, which also hit an all time high. Prices rose in the region by 60 cents per gallon. Other factors to growth include inflation, slight population growth and improving income levels.

Clarendon County had a two percent increase in gross retail sales with over $4 million.

Ultimately Schunk described the effects of the economy as “unwinding and “de-leveraging,” after years and years of solid growth.

“I’m not going to say there is a recession because it is too trivial to call right now,” Schunk said when asked if the economy had hit a depression.

Schunk said that the trend in the economy is frankly just part of the normal cyclical growth and decline of the market.