Outlook 2018
The new year begins with the strongest economy in Chattanooga in more than a decade. A year-end survey found small businesses owners across America to be as optimistic in their business outlook as any time since the 1980s. Last year, the Chattanooga area added jobs at three times the pace of the country as a whole and the local economy is poised for another year of expansion. As the economic recovery enters its eighth year, sustaining the the same pace of economic growth and momentum is getting tougher, especially in a tight labor market with interest rates expected to edge higher through 2018. Nonetheless, the Chattanooga region is poised for growth this year from more road building, new battery-powered vehicles, additional apartment and subdivision development and continued growth in the region’s changing entertainment and dining landscape.
In the heyday of the post-World War II industrial expansion, Chattanooga billed itself as “the Dynamo of Dixie” and boasted it was one of the top 10 cities in America in the share of workers employed in manufacturing.
Such factory jobs comprise only a fourth the share of local jobs that they did a half-century ago, but Chattanooga was still among the top 10 cities in the South for job growth over the past year.
Despite job cuts during 2017 by such major local employers at the Tennessee Valley Authority, Resolute Forest Products, Norfolk Southern Corp., U.S. Xpress Enterprises, Invista and Kmart, overall employment in metropolitan Chattanooga grew last year three times as fast as the United States as a whole.