I was researching something else the other day when I stumbled upon a document. “Parkersburg Area Economic Outlook 2021-2025” was published by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University way back in April. Seems like eons ago, doesn’t it? Well the information is new to me, and because I love digging in to this kind of stuff, I’m sharing it with you, too.

Written by Joseph Gutmann, Sarah Ihlenfeld, Sofia Nunez and Ryan Snyder, the report starts with an analysis of recent economic performance that includes gems such as “The Parkersburg area economy has generally struggled over the past several years,” and “Unfortunately, Wood County has also accounted for the majority of job losses registered (in the region) during the past few years …” (For this report, the Parkersburg area means Pleasants, Ritchie, Wirt and Wood counties in West Virginia, and Washington County in Ohio).

One of my favorite lines was the rather politely put “Although there had been serious consideration and hope for a cracker plant in the Parkersburg region, development talks for such a project have been tabled for the foreseeable future.”

Total employment figures for the region look like the trajectory of an Olympic high diver, starting in 2020. There’s been a little bounce back since then, but still nothing approaching levels shown at the beginning of the chart, in 2003.

There are charts aplenty, in fact, and discussion of demographic characteristics that include “The Parkersburg Area lags in some measure related to human capital but does well according to other metrics.”

In other words, it’s not all bad.

But once the report makes its way to the “Economic Outlook” section, the assessment is sobering.

“The forecast calls for the region’s rebound from the severe economic downtown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to continue during the first half of the outlook period, with the region surpassing the pre-pandemic level of employment by mid-2022. Longer term, the region’s economy is expected to slow considerably and even by the end of the outlook period in 2025 the overall level of employment in the five-county area will fall short of what was observed in the late 2000s prior to the Great Recession.”

Ouch.

Still, there are positives. It comes as no surprise the report concludes natural gas will play an “outsized” role in the area’s economy; and that the energy industry will affect other sectors. Natural resources and mining is expected to grow by nearly 5 percent annually; professional and business services, and leisure and hospitality are expected to grow by more than 3 percent annually. Manufacturing is expected to grow a little, at an annual rate of more than 1.3 percent per year.

On the other hand, both education and health services, and trade, transportation and utilities are expected to see annual growth below 1 percent.

Total personal income is expected to decline by more than $300 million in the area during 2022, but then inflation-adjusted personal income is expected to increase at a rate of 1.3 percent per year between 2022 and 2025. Population is expected to continue to shrink, though the report notes “Remote work, even after the pandemic is over, also presents opportunities for growth in the area.”

These are snippets from a long and thorough report, which really should be read by every decision-maker in the area. Frankly, it does not instill a lot confidence, but it is not set in stone, either. In fact, one sentence caught my attention: “Unanticipated changes in labor force participation within the Parkersburg Area’s labor force, pandemic-related or not, could cause the forecast for the regional unemployment rate to differ significantly from both its projected level and path.”

I suspect that is the case for a lot of the data points given in the report. It is those unanticipated changes that could send us reeling or propel us forward. Our ability to do better for ourselves by making changes — perhaps some that take us out of our comfort zone — is going to be important if we are to do better than the forecast.

“The region needs an adequately trained and healthy, educated workforce if it seeks to achieve stronger-than-expected growth in coming years,” the report says.

Right now, we’ve got money to spend, and surely the will to move in that direction, don’t we? Let’s make it happen, folks.

Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com