Metroplan on Monday released its 2015 Economic Review and Outlook, noting economic trends for the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The report says the central Arkansas economy grew in 2015. In August, the region tied with Birmingham, Alabama for 52nd spot among U.S. metros for percent job growth.
Occupational projections by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show the fastest job growth through 2022 will likely be in two health care sectors: “health care support” and “health care practitioners and technical.” The third-largest growth sector will be “computer and mathematical” jobs.
More: Get the full Metroplan report.
Metroplan is a voluntary association of central Arkansas governments that develops transportation plans, deals with common environmental issues, and provides information and staff resources to member local governments, the business community and the public.
One focus of the Metroplan report was the future of work in central Arkansas. The report said that as computers, robots, self-driving vehicles and other technologies replace human labor in more roles than ever, future jobs will involve the things humans do well, such as innovation, research and other activities machines cannot do.
“Robots are today serving more roles,” the report said. “Software programs are replacing accountants; self-driving cars are on the horizon. About 2.6 million U.S. jobs involve driving motorized vehicles — long-haul trucks, delivery trucks, taxi cabs, to name a few — and many driving jobs might begin disappearing.”
Two areas where human capability are essential are abstract problem solving and human/manual tasks, meaning jobs where “human workers are necessary, either because customers prefer the ‘human touch,’ or because the job requires constant adaptation, and spoken language skills.”
According to Jim McKenzie, executive director of Metroplan, these trends have not yet had a significant impact on the central Arkansas region. But he says they are affecting the global economy.
“We have a primarily service-based economy that is relatively light on manufacturing here in central Arkansas,” McKenzie said. “One of the things we’re anticipating is the use of big data and artificial intelligence to start impacting higher end service sector jobs.”
He said that is evidenced through the outsourcing of jobs such as accounting and legal research to places like India because of the availability of Internet technology.
In the health care field, mobile technology — including devices that track your heartbeat and blood sugar — can lower the demand for some human medical services. But McKenzie said that in the health care industry the “online diagnostics are pretty rudimentary right now.”
“In big data and medical diagnostics – doctors may be siginificantly at risk, but nurses face much less risk because that (job) requires human presence and human touch,” McKenzie said.
Still, the report showed that regional job growth has accelerated, outpacing the national average since March. Three of the top four job-providers have been in “professional and business services,” “leisure and hospitality” and “education and health,” while the construction sector also showed strong gains.
In particular, regional housing construction held steady through the first half of 2015. Single-family construction gained a bit compared with the first half of 2014, while multi-family was marginally lower. Total units built (1,107) was about the same as in 2013 and 2014, according to the report.
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