By TED CARTER
Mississippi’s jobs numbers are expected to grow 0.9 percent this year and rise to 1.1 percent in 2016 and remain there through 2017, economists with the University Research Center said in the Mississippi Economic Outlook’s summer 2015 issue.
For the first six months of 2015, non-farm job growth is up 0.8 percent compared to the same period in 2014, the Economic Outlook report says.
In May, Mississippi’s employment growth reached its highest level since November 2008. That level, however, is still 2.8 percent, or almost 33,000 jobs, below the highest level of employment in the state before the recession, according to the Outlook report.
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“While a number of sectors have more than recovered the jobs lost during the Great Recession, such as a number of service industries and state government, others such as construction and manufacturing remain well below their pre-recession peaks,” the report says.
The report tagged natural resources and mining and construction as the Mississippi sectors not expected to see job growth in 2015.
Meanwhile, Mississippi personal income is projected to grow 3.3 percent for the year and continue to grow in the two years that follow. That rate of increase is considerable, the Outlook report said, because the income growth rate in the state in 2013 and 2014 fell below 2 percent.
Total personal income in Mississippi is forecast to grow 4 percent in 2016 and 4.6 percent in 2017, the report says.
