Now the time to market area, Sikeston official says at economic forum

Since the stock market slide began in earnest in 2008, investors have lost more than $12 trillion. Falling real estate prices since the beginning of 2007 have cost homeowners $3.5 trillion.

Those figures, along with other statistics about the national economy, kicked off a discussion of the prospects for recovery and how business and government leaders should react to the recession Friday at Southeast Missouri State University.

The worst thing leaders can do is wait for good times to return, said Ed Dust, economic development director for Sikeston. Now is the time to be more aggressively marketing the region, he said. "You can't sit in your office and wait for the phone to ring or the e-mail to come in."

The forum, "Staying on Track During Tough Economic Times," was presented by the Center of Business and Economic Research at Southeast.

It is difficult to predict when a recovery will begin, said Dr. Bruce Domazlicky, director of the center, adding his view that once it begins, it will bring a surge of activity.

"Be prepared to take advantage," he said. "Once things start picking up, they will pick up very quickly."

The latest figures on unemployment at the national, state and local levels don't indicate the bottom of the recession has arrived. The national unemployment rate hit 8.1 percent in February. In Missouri, unemployment in January was 8 percent. In Southeast Missouri, county unemployment rates above 9 percent are common. The lowest rate is in Cape Girardeau and Perry counties, both at 6.3 percent, while the highest unemployment in the region is in Stoddard County at 11.6 percent.

But Southeast Missouri has innate strengths that, with proper marketing, can spark a recovery to transform the region. With quality river ports and interstate highway access, the region can market itself as a hub for warehousing and manufacturing, said Dr. Marty Romitti, director of the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center.

Already, he said, 40 percent of the businesses and 45 percent of the jobs in Southeast Missouri and the Bootheel are within three miles of Interstate 55. And Cape Girardeau is within 500 miles of 49 percent of the nation's factories.

"In a global market, where businesses can be anywhere, we have to attract businesses that like our geography," Romitti said.

The central location with good transportation helped Sikeston land the new warehouse for Orgill, a hardware wholesale distributor that will bring 350 jobs, Dust said.

The national economic picture was presented at the beginning by Dr. Ken Matheny, senior economist for Macroeconomic Advisers LLC. The immediate picture was bleak -- new home construction at 25 percent of its peak, auto sales the lowest since 1981 and unemployment near 10 percent by mid-2010.

"The industry is still hemorrhaging, and I don't think we have found the trough yet," Matheny said of home construction.

But Matheny said he expects the impact of the $787 billion federal stimulus bill to be felt beginning next month. "It is not unreasonable to expect a recovery" late this year or in early 2010, he said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

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