Central Arkansas’ economy seems to be holding steady amid worries of a looming recession.
Metroplan’s annual Little Rock Regional Economy report shows, in central Arkansas, job growth was especially steep in the transportation and warehousing sector at nearly double the national average for the past two years.
Jonathan Lupton, Metroplan’s senior planner for publications, says the region has certain unique characteristics that make it competitive to larger metro areas.
“I think the advantage is mostly low cost, that our housing costs are really well below the national average. And for a region of our size and our potential, I think we’ve been a little bit underrepresented or underrecognized,” Lupton said.
Lupton says Little Rock’s central location, as well as its access to all major modes of shipping, have helped propel the 30% growth in shipping sector jobs since 2020.
“Little Rock is a metro area of about 750,000 surrounded by a large rural area of small cities like Jonesboro and Russellville and Hot Springs,” Lupton said. “They’re not big enough to be warehousing centers, and so Little Rock is serving as the warehousing center sort of equidistant between those points.”
The report also shows job growth in the wholesale trade and financial services sectors. Despite that growth, Lupton says jobs in local government have seen a downturn, falling by about 8.5% over the past two years.
“They’ve got job stability, but the disadvantage is they don’t pay all that well. And people are moving on to other jobs and they’re leaving local government. I think that’s probably a good thing, you like seeing vitality in your private sector… but nonetheless, you could see some stress and strain with local governments trying to deliver services.”
Lupton says unemployment continues to hold steady in central Arkansas despite the Federal Reserve consistently raising interest rates. He says that can partly be explained by some unique demographic shifts leading to a shortage of workers.
“You’re seeing obviously a major retirement going on with the Baby Boom generation. At the same time, there’s just less workforce participation and there really are fewer young people,” he said. “Gen Z is hitting the workforce, and Gen Z is smaller than the millennial generation. So we’re just not seeing as many entrants into the workforce.”
Lupton says the continued development of the Port of Little Rock is partly responsible for the growth in transportation and warehousing jobs in the region since 2020. Despite softening economic conditions nationally, he says the central Arkansas area will likely weather any potential storm coming in the next few months or years.
“We have a significant medical and a significant education sector and a significant government sector, and these things are not normally components of really rapid growth. But they are components of steady, stable growth. So in bad times, our region tends to do pretty well.”
