If you have lived in Ocala for more than a decade, then you probably know our community’s story of bouncing back from the Great Recession in 2007-08. If you are newer to the area since then (and more than 100,000 people have moved here over the last decade), it is important history to know.
In the early 2000’s, our community was truly a boomtown. Everyone was a builder, developer, or realtor and we were building and flipping houses like nobody’s business. Unfortunately, it was nobody’s business. No one was actually living in many of the houses, and we had stopped building a real economy to support the growth. When the Great Recession happened, arguably no community in our country was more negatively impacted than Ocala. Overnight, the County and School System lost 40% of their revenue, wages stagnated, and we began a period of seven years of double-digit unemployment. SEVEN YEARS!
The business community in partnership with local government and education partners made an intentional effort to turn the tide in 2012 with the creation of the CEP with the merger of the Chamber of Commerce with the Economic Development Council. While there were a number of goals, the three top goals were to 1) to create more jobs which 2) pay wages higher than the current county median and 3) resulted in the significant private investment in the community.
Over the last 12 years, those goals have been overwhelmingly met. Just through the efforts of the CEP, more than 13,000 new jobs have been announced in our community from new and expanding primary employers. Not only have we created more jobs but the wages these jobs pay has significantly boosted the area’s median wage. Over the last decade, the US median wage has increased 44% but, in our community, it is up 65%. The capital investment by these companies into our community exceeds $2.3 billion.
Some may ask why the last metric is important. One, it represents dollars spent on land, building, and equipment in our community – dollars which are getting turned over and benefiting other local businesses who in turn are spending those dollars on additional staff, equipment, and facilities. Perhaps more importantly, it represents investments which lead to increased tax revenue for local governments without increasing property tax rates.
Our community has bounced back and bounced back stronger from the Great Recession. Staying focused on building a diverse, sustainable economy has been the key to our community’s resurgence and must continue to be the focus if we do not want to return to the dark days of high unemployment, stagnant wages, and lost revenue.
