The first economic data since Hurricane Helene hit Augusta and other parts of Georgia is now available.
I will provide an analysis of this data in my annual economic forecast breakfast this Thursday, December 5th at 7:30 am in the JSAC Roscoe Williams Ballroom on the Augusta University Summerville Campus.
The event is free and open to the public but registration is required.
There is a small amount of academic literature on the labor market impact of hurricanes. In fact, Mark Thompson, the Dean of the Hull College of Business at Augusta University, has analyzed the impact of Katrina and Bret on Louisiana and Corpus Christi, TX.
Hurricane Bret hit Corpus Christi, TX in 1999. Thompson and his co-authors find that it had no effect on unemployment in the 12 months following impact. However, four years later, the unemployment rate was significantly lower. They suggest that a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, provides the opportunity for a community to respond by reconstructing better infrastructure and production facilities.
In Thompson’s analysis of the impact of Katrina on the Louisiana labor market, he finds that an index of labor market activity that includes employment, unemployment, hours worked in manufacturing, and real wages falls 5.2 percent in the three months following landfall. However, in the next year, the index recovers to pre-Katrina levels.
Belasen and Polacheck (2008) analyze all 19 hurricanes to hit Florida between 1998 and 2005. They find that earnings increase in the three months following a hurricane but employment falls. Two years after a hurricane, employment is 4.3 percent below that of unaffected counties, but earnings growth is 0.4 percent above.
