Editorial: How much have we recovered? From the recession we mean
In the coming days, Southwest Florida residents will get a refresher course on the top news stories of 2018.
Red tide harmed tourism and sea life. Releases from Lake Okeechobee and watershed pollution fueled toxic blue-green algae blooms in local waterways. Sales tax referendums passed in both Collier and Lee counties. There’s been much attention recently to NCH Healthcare System’s hospital admission policies.
Statewide in 2018, there was the Valentine’s Day mass shooting at a South Florida high school. Devastating Hurricane Michael hit in October. Floridians elected a new governor and ousted a longtime U.S. senator after recounts in three historically close contests, including agriculture commissioner.
What we won’t hear about in the coming days is double-digit unemployment, a distressing foreclosure crisis putting people out of their homes in record numbers and a startling decline in the real estate market. If you go back a decade, those latter three downward trends in the local economy were the Daily News’ top stories of 2008.
Time to reflect
A year ago our editorial board suggested 2018 would be an appropriate time to reflect on how far we’ve come in recovering from the Great Recession. In today’s world of instantaneous communication through social media, the negatives seem relentless at times — most recently as the stock market took an unprecedented December tumble.
We contend it’s important to look farther back to remind ourselves how far we’ve recovered economically.
The recession, which stretched into several calendar years, was called the worst economic contraction since the decade-long Great Depression that started in 1929. We chose 2008 as a benchmark because that’s when gross domestic product (GDP) had declined for three quarters and the Dow fell to under 7,500 after crossing above 14,000.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Economics, the lowest growth in GDP since the first quarter of 2016 has been 1.5 percent and in 2018 quarterly GDP growth reports have been 2.2, 4.2 and 3.4 percent so far.
In early October, the Dow hit a new record 26,828. While it closed Wednesday at 22,878, that’s still three times where we were at in 2008.
Other measurements
These are some other measurements that can give us a historical perspective on our economic recovery:
• A national housing research firm reported that new home starts hit their lowest figure in a decade in 2008, with 566 in Collier and 742 in Lee for the year. Compare that with May, June and July 2018 when nearly 1,000 new home building permits were issued in Collier just in those three months.
• Collier’s jobless rate was above 8 percent and Lee’s at 9.5 percent in fall 2008 as the counties approached eventual double-digit unemployment. A decade later, November’s unemployment rate was 2.9 percent in Lee and 3.0 percent in Collier with hundreds of jobs still unfilled.
• Collier’s total property tax roll surpassed $112 billion for 2018, the second consecutive year of eclipsing the previous high of $107 billion set before the bubble burst around 2008. Of that $112 billion, there was nearly $88.5 billion of taxable property. Lee hasn’t recovered as much yet, with taxable property value of about $78.5 billion in 2018, still below the $84.5 billion of taxable value in 2008.
• A recent report from a national property research company puts Florida foreclosures for third quarter 2018 at 35 percent below pre-recession rates.
Those are the kinds of numbers we probably won’t hear much about as we reflect on the top news of 2018, but they’re historically significant.
_ Part five of a series. Allen Bartlett wrote this for the Daily News editorial board.