Is the Bloom Off the Magnolia In the Southeast? Signs of Economic Deceleration Abound Across 12-State Region
It is part of the Sun Belt mystique, that feeling that leads people here to assume that their region will just keep chugging along even when the economy of the rest of the nation hits a downturn.</br></br>But that particular notion of Southern exceptionalism-born during the 1975 recession, which hurt hardly a single magnolia blossom, and nurtured since with unblushing boosterism throughout the Southeast-may have just expired. There are signs of economic deceleration all across the Southeast.</br></br>In Georgia, manufacturing output and construction employment actually declined in September, albeit slightly, while the vital services and trade sector was flat.</br></br>In Florida, population growth has eased, office and commercial building is down and vacancy rates continue high. In Orlando, the state's fastest-growing metropolitan area this year, housing starts were flat in the first nine months of this year; in Miami and Jacksonville, they were down 20 percent.</br></br>In North Carolina, industrial workers' weekly hours dipped in six of the first eight months of this year and were flat in the others.