Regional economy report shows uptick

The State of the Bloomington Regional Economy report, released last week by the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation, showed gains in several sectors.

“I think some of the interesting stuff, and if you think about the recession going off around the world the last few years, it had a lot to do with housing prices and people’s housing values,” said Ron Walker, Bloomington Economic Development Corporation president. “When you look at how many housing units have been sold in the first three months of 2012, it was almost an 8 percent increase over the same period a year ago.”

Walker said prices for housing in Bloomington have also increased.

“That means it’s good for sellers and a little tougher for buyers, but it tends to show you that the economy is improving and that this is becoming a more valuable place and that people are willing to pay more to be here,” he said.

The report also examined how jobs in particular industries are predicted to increase or decrease during the next year.
 
“One of the surprising things was how many life sciences jobs we expect,” Walker said. “We’re up to 1,000 new jobs in the next 12 to 18 months, and that’s more than we expected these companies would say.”

Walker said the large student population in Bloomington does skew the results of the report, but the corporation expects this and is able to account for it.

“It skews it in a couple ways,” he said. “Because of the student population here, we tend to appear as one of the poorest communities. It also skews it in another way in that because of the student population, there’s a lot of housing demand. People make a lot of money renting places to students, and so it drives up rent.”

Walker said the corporation is looking to try and grow several local industries.

“We’re really focused on the IT and tech sector here because it typically pays well and it doesn’t require a lot of resources and infrastructure to grow those industries,” he said.

He said they are also interested in growing the life science industries.

“We have a lot of expertise in that area, and we have an abundant supply of water, and if you’re making pharmaceuticals, you use water quite a bit,” Walker said. “And we also have good energy production.”

Walker said the point of the report is to track trends for the Bloomington area.

“It was an idea that came up in our marketing committee as a way to provide a big group of people some fairly comprehensive information on the economy,” Walker said. “You can get some indicators on how we’re doing and all in one spot.”