Marlton, Medford, and Moorestown, New Jersey, are located in Burlington County, the largest county in New Jersey, which extends the entire width of the state from the Delaware River to the Atlantic Ocean, within the $400 billion marketplace of the Boston-Washington Corridor. Many of Burlington County's cities and towns are only a short distance from industry in Philadelphia, and the county is only ninety miles south of the economic hub of New York City.
Burlington County is home to a sophisticated and diverse business community with more than 7,500 individual businesses in the area. Large industry in the area ranges from warehouse and distribution facilities run by IKEA, Burlington Coat Factory, and Office Depot, to high-tech companies such as Okidata and Panasonic American Laboratories. Other interesting businesses in the area include Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., manufacturers of everyone's favorite cranberry juice, and the Viking Yacht Company, makers of the best convertible sport fishing yacht in the world.
Over the past ten years, Burlington County experienced 50,000 new jobs and 2,600 new businesses. Top employers in Moorestown include the high-tech firms of Lockheed Martin and the Computer Science Corp. Other businesses in the area include the Koen Book Distributors and Axiom, Inc. Marlton is home to the Virtua-West Jersey Hospital, one of the top employers within Burlington County. Throughout the region there are also many organizations that support small businesses including the Medford Business Association in Medford and the Moorestown Business Association, an organization of retail, professional and non-profit businesses that promote Moorestown as "the ideal town in which to shop, seek professional services, and participate in community life."
As the New York Times put it so well, "Burlington County is coming alive."
THE FORECAST
By Lawrence Yun, Senior Research Forecaster
A rising standard of living depends critically on technological advances and rising worker productivity. A larger pie from a given set of resources is surely a good thing. At the turn of the 20th century, it was not uncommon for people to work 60 hours a week and the life expectancy was 47 years.
Good news/bad news
Though technological advances and the accompanying increase in worker productivity are definitively good in the long haul, they can nonetheless impose short-term costs. Productivity advanced 4.8% in 2002 ? the highest rate of increase in over 50 years. It implies one of two things: that the economy grew robustly by 4.8% with the same number of workers, or that the same output can be achieved with fewer workers.
The data suggest the latter ? that the country produced just a little bit more but a lot fewer workers. Since the employment peak in February, 2001, 2.6 million workers have lost their jobs, pushing the unemployment rate to 6.4%. That's the highest level in nine years. The manufacturing sector took the brunt of it, accounting for about 90% of those job cuts. It's true that job losses in the manufacturing sector have been occurring for quite a while (believe it or not, since way back in 1979). But they seem more visible today since these job losses are not being picked up by other sectors of the economy, as would be the norm during a non-recession year. There were 19.4 million workers employed in the manufacturing sector in 1979 compared to 14.7 million currently. In fact, in 1979, manufacturing jobs represented one out of every five jobs. Now, the ratio is roughly one out of then.
But other non-manufacturing job cuts had been masked by job gains elsewhere, particularly in the service sectors providing education, health care, management consulting information, and financial activities. The flexibility of the U.S. labor market has provided ample job creation opportunities. The U.S. economy has created 40 million net new jobs since 1979 ? the year when the manufacturing jobs began to slip. The net transitional effect over these years has improved lives for those who view today's standard of living as better than what it was back then.
Outlook
The job market conditions in the U.S. are likely to improve in the near future. The aggregate demand is set to pick up solidly from the third quarter, at which point hiring's in both manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors will begin to increase. Tax cuts, lower oil prices, restocking of depleted business inventories, positive wealth effect from rising stock and home prices, turnaround in corporate profits ? another beneficial byproduct of rising productivity - and rising export orders resulting from the weaker dollar will all add to the overall demand for good and services and demand for workers. The forecast calls for close to three million net new jobs over the next two years. The exact composition between manufacturing and non-manufacturing is hard to say. But, one thing is sure, most will view it as a better life than before.
A turnaround in the economy will also be good news for the housing sector. Housing needs a new set of homebuyers wrought from job creations. Low mortgage rates have done wonders in lifting housing related indicators, including sales, prices, refinancing, home improvement spending and real-estate-related jobs.
But the bottoming of mortgage rates is likely to have already occurred. Rising mortgage rates are not housing's friend. Luckily, any rise in rates is projected to be very modest. This is because technological advancement put downward pressure on prices, thus keeping inflation in check. The current low inflation rate and the low future inflation expectations, as evidenced by low long-term interest rates, are yet other tangible byproducts of strong productivity gains.
Local Market
The manufacturing sector comprises 9.9% of the local job market, lower than the national average. Nonetheless, the job cuts have been continuing for the past year. Jobs will only begin to show gains from 2004. Therefore, the expected rising mortgage rates will hurt home sales in the region. Meanwhile, new single-family home construction has been very active, up almost 8% in 2002. This implies that plentiful of new homes will be hitting the market, thereby limiting the home price growth. Instead of the 12% gain in 2002, home price will rise by 9% in 2003 and then 4% in 2004. Sales will fall off very modestly over the next two years.
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