Little Rock Burgundy Book: Arkansas’s Transportation Industry Sees Strongest Job Growth in a Decade

ST. LOUIS – A May survey of business contacts in the Little Rock Zone of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis revealed that a little more than half of respondents expect that economic conditions in 2015 will be better than in 2014. That’s down from three months earlier, when a little more than 80 percent were optimistic about the near-term outlook.

Still, Arkansas’s transportation employment in the first quarter of 2015 experienced its fastest year-over-year growth rate in over a decade.

The information was published June 23, 2015, in the latest quarterly release of the Burgundy Books, a publication produced by the St. Louis Fed. The reports offer comprehensive economic information for each of the Bank’s four zones: St. Louis, Little Rock, Ark., Louisville, Ky., and Memphis, Tenn.

The Little Rock Zone includes the majority of Arkansas, except the northeast part of the state. The population in the Zone is approximately 2.5 million people, including the 710,000 who live in the Little Rock metropolitan statistical area (MSA).

For a summary and details on other specific economic indicators, such as unemployment, home prices, building permits, credit card delinquency and banking, see the full Little Rock report at http://research.stlouisfed.org/regecon/burgundybooks/15/06/BB0615LR.pdf.    

The next Burgundy Books will be released Sept. 22, 2015.