Economics

Augusta is one of five cities chosen for a program focused on neighborhood housing conditions. The Georgia Initiative for Community Housing (GICH), offered through the state’s Department of Community Affairs, will provide training and technical assistance. Hawthorne Welcher, Jr., Director of Augusta-Richmond County Housing and Development told ABD his department will work with the Carl Vinson Institute at the University of Georgia (UGA) to create a housing plan. “One of the things that I would like to see as we go through this process is that the technical assistance is

A new video by Dickinson Architect offers a step-by-step tour of the Augusta Technical College’s incubator project planned for Broad Street. Posted on LinkedIn, it features Nick Dickinson and Augusta Tech President, Dr. Jermaine Whirl outlining the process and what the end result will be. The microenterprise center is being built in the former Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce building at 600 Broad Street. In the video. Dickinson and Whirl begin on the first floor, which they said will be called “The Den.” Click here to watch the video produced

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documents that Black and Hispanic persons are up to twice as likely to need hospitalization when contracting Covid-19 than white persons. The likelihood of death is over 1.5 times as high as white persons. Recent research by Robert Fairlee of the University of California Los Angeles has identified racial and ethnic disparities in business earnings. Pandemic-induced losses to businesses in 2020 were 16-19 percent for all business owners. However, Black business owners suffered a larger negative impact of 12-14 percent compared to

The Augusta Leading Economic Index (LEI) fell 1.1 percent in December 2023 from November 2023. It is 2.5 percent lower than December 2022. The index has fallen 12 percentage points from its all-time peak in June 2022, with data going back to 2007 (see chart below). The major components that caused the monthly decline were residential permits and initial claims for unemployment insurance. Housing permits fell 21 percent in December from November and were 813 lower in 2023 than in 2022. Initial claims for unemployment insurance claims rose 27 percent