Editor's note: Ted C. Jones, Chief Economist - Senior Vice President for Stewart Title Guaranty Company, will deliver the closing keynote address at the 2015 Oklahoma Building Summit & Expo on Thursday, August 27. Jones recently shared some of his perspective in advance of the Building Summit. The following is the first of three blog posts from that conversation:
Ted C. Jones
Question: What message will you be bringing the Oklahoma audience?
Answer: I'll be looking at where the economy is, job growth, the whole works. In Texas, just as you have in Oklahoma, it's not nearly as bad as North Dakota. But we are seeing a toll being taken on what otherwise were dynamic economies, some of the best in the country, with the downturn in oil prices. But we're seeing housing sales hold up extremely well. Oklahoma City for example, in the last 12 months you still had 13,300 net new jobs. That's a pretty impressive job growth rate, 2.15 percent. So, OKC for example, is still growing jobs at better than the national rate, despite the decline in oil prices.
Q: What is driving Oklahoma's economy?
A: We're not just a one-trick pony, your state and my state. Oklahoma City is a major transportation center. It's a regional financial service center. It serves a very large population of medical and other facilities, and as we know, it's a major government entity. So it's just not a one-trick pony.
Register for the Building Summit
Sponsored by:
