Despite all the hullabaloo surrounding the U.S. economy, the state of commerce seems to be slowly making a comeback.
Although retail sales barely crept upward by the end of 2015, consumer spending was at its strongest since the Great Recession, according to the Regional Intelligence Report released by Cal State Long Beach last week.
According to the report, last year saw a record high in automobile purchases. Coupled with low gas prices and reduced interest rates on auto loans, the auto industry saw an 8.5 percent growth rate in the third quarter from that of 2014. Construction is on the rise and 50,000 jobs were added to the manufacturing sector.
California has also made great advancements to the state’s job market. There has been a 460,000 job increase and many counties have opted to raise minimum wage to $15 by 2020. Logging and mining were the only sectors on the decline, because of plummeting energy prices.
Long Beach ports also saw lows in both imports and exports, but the total number of containers throughout at the port was up 6.1 percent in the first quarter of 2016, according the Regional Intelligence Report.
Compared to Los Angeles County, Long Beach’s unemployment rate still resides 5 percent below the pre-recession peak in March 2008.
Single-family home values and apartment rents rose significantly, with home sales valued at $530,300 during the fourth quarter 2015.
According to the report, “from the fourth quarter of 2014 to the fourth quarter of 2015, the average apartment rent grew by 4.7 percent in East Long Beach, by 3.3 percent in West Long Beach, and by 2.9 percent in North Long Beach.”
Although it may seem like a slow incline, the report suggests that “sometimes it pays to be a tortoise—particularly when that ‘tortoise’ offers the relatively high quality of life that so many Americans enjoy.”