Does anyone know what the heck happened to Hot Spring's economy? (Little Rock: sales, home sales)

DC2BE · 02-04-2009, 06:30 AM

I ran across this article and was wondering if anyone knew what happened to the economy in Hot Springs... Did some major corporation go out of business or what, look at the decline since 2000...

Hot Springs, AR: Income and Poverty in Hot Springs, AR (http://www.ecanned.com/AR/2007/01/income-and-poverty-in-hot-springs-ar.shtml - broken link)

poltergiest · 02-04-2009, 06:55 AM

First off its a blog not news. Talk of the Town on 1340 am said that the unemployment rate was 4.5% and that was a month ago. Tourism is the biggest employer in Hot Springs. Little Rock also is holding on, but layoffs are coming. HBC and Boeing are laying off, and have some facilities in Little Rock. There seems to be a lot of tourism yet. They are building a big new strip mall where the old fair grounds used to be. It has Best buy and Sams and a few others. The casino is going to hire soon as they are expanding at the Oak Lawn. This said, things are getting hard all over and this time around it is not limited to the industrial north as it was in the 80s. Nothing is safe anymore. I have a brother who works at he Sherwin Williams plant in Wichita and they have laid off the whole 3rd shift, and his second shift is two weeks ahead in production and they were sent home 3 hours early Friday. The signs are all over and non good. Home sales in Hot Springs are dismal right now. I had one agent tell me that if it was going at a snails pace right now it would be fast. This is coming off of a year ago when you put something on the market and within a month you most likely had it sold. I just let my home go off the market for now. We had a few showings but no offers. My agent’s husband built a spec house and it has been on the market for over a 9 months and nothing.

DC2BE · 02-04-2009, 07:34 AM

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know the economy is bad eveywhere...but I'm not talking about the recent recession. Look at the stats in the link, from 2000 to 2007 almost a 50% decrease in median household income...something had to happen for that big of a decline. How can you go from a median income of 60K+ to almost 30K?

poltergiest · 02-04-2009, 07:40 AM

I am not sure I buy the stats you are putting out. They just do not make any sence.

strumpeace · 02-04-2009, 07:48 AM

Median household income in Hot Springs was never $60k.

In 2000, the median hh income in Hot Springs was $25,500.

In 2007, the estimated median hh income in Hot Springs was $31,642. Adjusted for inflation back to 2000 (real) dollars, the 2007 estimate would be $26,519.

Source: DemographicsNow (a proprietary database)

DC2BE · 02-04-2009, 08:25 AM

I didn't believe it either...and I know you question the legitimacy of the link...but the web site looks and sounds legit, and they seem to be confident on their stats.....like where would they get this #230 out of 233 biggest declines in income.....I don't know how you make these stats up.....

From the article......."The household income has sharply declined from the 2000 values (inflation adjusted). The median income has decreased to $31,986, posting a 47.3 percent decline. The Hot Springs, AR MSA, when analyzing percentage of decline, ranks 1 of 1 metro area in percent of decline for household income in Arkansas. Hot Springs ranks 230 of 233 metro area when comparing the decline in median income level for the United States."

Stormcrow73 · 02-04-2009, 08:53 AM

Their data is not corroborated by my quick search on the census website: http://censtats.census.gov/data/AR/1600533400.pdf Median hh income in the 2000 census for all households was $26,040. This is directly from the source this web site cites!

Looking at the site you linked. It breaks the median income up along ethnic lines in the first paragraph without citing the overall median. Which according to the actual census data, cannot even be close to correct anyway. In the second paragraph, they arrive at their decrease by apparently comparing the cited OVERALL median to the cited WHITE household median in the first paragraph!! (The math doesn't work out perfectly but it's very close) This is ridiculous data engineering at worst. At best, it's written by someone without even a high school education.

Again...fact checking is good.

poltergiest · 02-04-2009, 08:56 AM

Storm your stats look much more realistic than the blog. The stats in his link are nothing but a personal blog. Maybe it is a joke.

strumpeace · 02-04-2009, 10:45 AM

To the OP --

Look at the third paragraph of the page you referenced. It's not even complete.

Don't ever go by what you read on blogs. Do your own research. Even if you don't have access to a reliable proprietary database, you can always check the SF-1 and SF-3 files on the Census website. If you need help in learning how to find and read the Census data sets, just let me know via dm.

Aporkalypse · 02-08-2009, 02:58 PM

Hot Springs has never really had a major corporate presence, it's a tourist town. I can tell you that it's doing just fine but as tourism declines because of the economy it will squeeze the area. They hope that people cancelling large, expensive trips will choose to drive there instead and save money and actually that has happened in the past during recessions.