Leading economic indicators reflect the improvement and could be a harbinger for recovery to strengthen in the coming months, he said.<\/p>\n
“Is anything guaranteed? No, especially since you can look at the numbers and see that, overall, things are still fairly weak. The declines appear to have stopped, which must happen for recovery to happen, but there are still a lot of people unemployed who are going to start running out of unemployment benefits if they don’t get extended,” Goitein said.<\/p>\n
“But a lot of the things they said would happen within a year of the stimulus package are starting to happen. Job losses have stopped, fewer people are being punched out of work, the housing market is still improving.”<\/p>\n
The Summary Index rose 1.2 percent in the fourth quarter to 97.3. While still below where it was a year ago, that is an indicator of recovery.<\/p>\n
More detailed analyses of various data, most of which are seasonally adjusted, show they concur. That includes the labor picture, which declined in each of the first three quarters – the second quarter being the worst – but was improved in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Gains outnumbered losses for the payrolls of the key industries in the Peoria-Pekin metropolitan statistical area from the third quarter to the fourth quarter; four improved and only one fell. Others were stable, the report showed.<\/p>\n
Local government and professional\/business services had the largest quarter-to-quarter gains at 2.5 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively.<\/p>\n
While the number of manufacturing jobs continued to slide – by less than half a percentage point in the fourth quarter – it was at a far less precipitous rate from the first three quarters of the year. Another good sign in that regard is that Caterpillar Inc. showed gains in sales and revenues in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Construction jobs remained stable third quarter to fourth quarter, but for the third consecutive quarter the number of single-family residential building permits increased – by 29.1 percent from the third quarter 2009 – indicating future activity in that industry.<\/p>\n
Other leading indicators were positive from third quarter to fourth quarter, as well. Job openings posted by employers grew by 6.3 percent (but were down 46.5 percent from a year ago), as did the confidence of the employers by 23.9 percent. The number of initial unemployment claims, while up 78.5 percent from a year earlier, dropped significantly from the third quarter, 48.9 percent.<\/p>\n
The local housing industry continues to improve; in fact, the number of houses sold increased for the third consecutive quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis.<\/p>\n
“These indicators show a pattern of improvement in recent quarters and increases in leading indicators, signaling further growth in local business conditions during the coming months,” the report said.<\/p>\n
Paul Gordon can be reached at 686-3288 or pgordon@pjstar.com<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Read the original article from Journal Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n Recovery, like recession, is a direction rather than a level, Bernard Goitein says. And as one of the area’s top business researchers, he believes the local economy is headed in the right direction. Goitein, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Bradley University’s Foster College of Business Administration, bases his belief on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-354187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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