Staff at Augusta Regional Airport are tallying up the numbers following the 2024 Masters Tournament. Across the board, most are higher than for the 2023 tournament. Looking first at the number of flights, the airport traffic peaked on Friday with 645 flights. That compared to 544 in 2023, but still below the 684 the airport logged in 2022. In fact, although numbers were higher for most categories, 2024 is still overshadowed by the 2022 tournament visitors. “All our performance indicators were behind 2022. But keep in mind that 2022 was

The Augusta Leading Economic Index (LEI) increased 0.3 percent in March from February. It is 1.6 percent higher than March 2023. The two components that contributed positively to the gain were residential building permits (up 8.8 percent) and initial claims for unemployment insurance (down 28 percent). Residential building permits have generally been on an upward trend since the financial crisis of 2008 and reflect a growing population from 535,000 in 2008 to 629,000 in 2023. Although initial claims for unemployment insurance fell, job openings also fell for the sixth consecutive