There is a bit of good news in the current economic morass.
Personal income in the Atlanta region grew 2.4 percent in 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis says. The data was released Tuesday.
That is a turnaround from 2009, when income was down 3.1 percent.
"I think it is certainly good to have the income growing again. That is what we want and expect in an economic recovery," said economist Roger Tutterow of Mercer University.
"The problem is we are not growing income as fast as a lot of our peer cities or as fast as we would like to see for the economy to feel robust," he said.
Personal income measures dollars flowing within a metropolitan statistical area without reference to the number of workers it is spread among. The rise can be attributed to pay increases or more people working, and to a lesser extent to government payments such as unemployment and Social Security. Government payments in the Atlanta metro area slowed but remained slightly above the national average.
The Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area, which extends along I-20 from the Alabama line to Walton County in the east, and from Pickens County in the north to Pike County in the south, lagged behind the income growth average of 2.9 percent in metro areas. Washington led income growth with 3.7 percent, and Miami, where the real estate crash has possibly more ill effects than Atlanta, brought up the rear of the 12 metro areas with the largest total incomes.
"Atlanta was a city with significant exposure in the real estate market," Tutterow said. "That spilled over into financial institutions, the legal community and other areas. So the really heavy exposure Atlanta has to the construction and real estate markets accounts for some of its underperformance."
A bit of better-than-average news in Georgia was that income in Hinesville, the anchor town near Fort Stewart, was up 14 percent in 2010. The Bureau of Economic Analysis credited that growth to the military.
Georgia's 2010 earnings grew in most private industries, led by professional services and health care.
Chief losers continued to be construction, where earnings declined 4.5 percent, and real estate, where it dropped 2.1 percent.
MSA Personal income growth 2010
Washington, 3.7 percent
New York, 3.6 percent
Houston, 3.1 percent
Dallas, 3.1 percent
Boston, 3.1 percent
San Francisco, 2.7 percent
Los Angeles, 2.6 percent
Atlanta, 2.4 percent
Philadelphia, 2.4 percent
Chicago, 2.4 percent
Detroit, 2.2 percent
Miami, 2.1 percent
