A panel of economists made presentations on the state of the Adirondack North Country to a crowd of nearly 200 during the Adirondack North County Association’s 56th annual meeting at the Conference Center at Lake Placid on Monday, October 3.
The event covered a wide range of topics including New
York State’s new regional economic development initiative, people and industries, as well as the state of education in the area and the current economic conditions.
Jaison Abel, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group reported that while the 14 counties that ANCA serves were hit by the 2009 recession, the North Country never saw the extremes felt in other areas of the country.
According to Abel, since 2009 the region has seen a period of slow growth at an annual rate of about 2.5 percent, which is due,in part, to counties in the ANCA region being spared the worst of the housing cycle and seeing more of a rebound in it.
Abel said home prices in the North Country were down 10 percent through 2009, but have jumped by 4 percent in the last year.
However, despite the growth, he said consumer confidence in the region is still very low. “Housing and credit problems haven’t hit upstate as hard, but weak consumer confidence remains a major area of concern,” he said.
Jen McCormick of Empire State Development, who also spoke at the conference, believes that this is largely due to the unemployment rate of the area remaining above 7 percent, the lack of high paying jobs being created in the area, and a lack of educational opportunities.
“If you look across regional studies, the one factor that pointsto more growth and more activity is more highly educated and highly skilled work forces,” McCormick said.
She believes this is due to the lack of colleges and universities in the region. And ANCA Central Region Vice President Richard Bird agrees.
He feels that educating people is an asset to all and that expanding educational opportunities creates a win-win situation for everyone.
“Colleges are good vehicles for bringing people to the area. The students are essentially four-year tourists, which is good for the economy. Then their parents come to visit which helps to make them more aware of the area and
what we have to offer here,” Bird said.
Compared to the state and national averages, educational attainment is down in the North Country, McCormick said.
According to her research, less than 22 percent of people in the ANCA region hold at least a Bachelors Degree, with the number dropping down to around 9 percent at the graduate level.
Which, according to McCormick, is lower than the state average. Currently, there are 22 colleges and universities within the 14 county region. In Herkimer County, there is only one. There are none in Hamilton County.
Both McCormick and Abel believe that private schools, colleges and universities can become critical for economic growth because they have the ability to bring in money from outside the region.
“In addition to employment,schools do something very
unique—they produce human capital. They need to be recognized as an extremely valuable industry,” Abel said.
Bird echoed his statement by acknowledging plans for the creation of nano-technology centers in Utica at Utica College as well as in Saratoga County which, according
to Bird, will create hundreds of high tech jobs for the area.
Despite the concerns, at the end of the day, Abel said the upstate economy has proven to be “more stable than average.”
