Tallahassee Economic Index Shows Slowing Local Economy

Tallahassee Economic Index Shows Slowing Local Economy


Tallahassee, FL – The Tallahassee Economic Index (TEI) released numbers ending November 2018. Following a 1.06 point slide in October, the Index fell .75 points from 36.96 to 36.21 in November.

“The Index fell for the third month in a row in November. The local economy just can’t seem to get any meaningful traction. Business and consumer spending categories continue to post discouraging numbers and we saw double digit declines for New Construction Permits and Realtors Sales when compared to November of 2017,” said TEI Founder Brett F. Ewing. “

Not everything is dragging, however, and if every input acted like Lumber and Other Building Materials Sales we would be in good shape. This one input has seen seasonally adjusted growth in 22 of the past 24 months and is helping to hold up an otherwise weak economic picture.”

“The slowing signals we were seeing months ago have continued to persist as the index fell yet again this month,” said Lance Mitchell, Director of Research at the TEI. “While we did have three bright spots in November that have also sustained throughout the year—Median Sales Price, Initial Claims, and Airport Traffic—we saw declines in either a monthly or yearly basis of every other category that we monitor. This broad based deterioration towards the end of the year is only amplifying what has been a considerably weak 2018 for the capital city.”

  • Lumber Sales were chopped 3.66 percent MoM, but still grew 20.03 percent YoY
  • New Construction Permits fell 36.48 percent from October, and 53.49 percent from last November
  • Initial Claims for Reemployment Assistance collapsed by 24.14 percent MoM, and 2.84 percent YoY
  • Realtor Sales sank 13.62 percent from October, and 20.3 percent from a year ago
  • Airport Traffic ascended 8.36 percent from last month, and 11.51 percent from November 2017

6 Responses to "Tallahassee Economic Index Shows Slowing Local Economy"

  1. Hmmmm, lets see, High Taxes, To high RENT, High Cost of Commercial Utilities, To many costly Mandates, To long to get Permits, Too expensive Permits, To many “Studies”, just to name a few.

  2. Has anyone figured in the cost of corruption in this index? The velocity of money becomes highly devalued to the local and area community as funds are swept out of legitimate businesses and then are not reinvested (because the $ goes offshore or in other illegal ventures).

    Just asking? Maddox? Gillum? Fernandez? Daniels? Paige-Carter? Corey? And more to be named. Government corruption and local corruption bleeds communities deeply.

    News Maven – what’s your research say?

    1. C of C:
      I’m expecting a stagnant economy until the 2020 election. Because all the Dem-Socialists with power know the best way to stop Trump’s re-election is to throttle US economic growth. And they will do everything they can to accomplish that.

  3. Too much $$$ is being removed from the Tallahassee economy in the way of taxes. If city and county want to rely on citizen spending for their revenue, they have to get more $$$ into the hands of the citizens…and that means across the board tax reductions.

    1. Totally agree, but the new suspects will be as tone deaf as their predecessors. Until the voters wise up and stop pulling the lever for the tax and spend klan, economic indicators will continue to erode.

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