Businesses discuses 2023 as a new year begins

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – As a new year starts, it’s a new beginning for everyone, especially local businesses looking forward to a prosperous 2024. Data from Texas A&M’s Prive Enterprise Research Center (PERC) showed that 2023 was a good year for the local economy, while businesses say it could have been better.

According to PERC, local unemployment for the Bryan-College Station MSA in 2023 was 3 percent, the same percentage as in 2022. That number is lower than the state’s 4.1 percent and the nation’s 3.7 percent. It also places the BCS MSA as the third lowest in the state behind Midland and Amarillo.

Non-farm employment grew 2.5 percent between Oct. 22 and Oct. 23. Sectors that saw growth include trade transportation utilities, education and health, government, and leisure and hospitality which went up 6 percent.

“Times are fairly good right now not really overheated at all, but we are nowhere near the fears that people had about a recession a while back,” PERC Executive Director Dennis Jansen said. “If look nationally, we’re doing a little better than nationally.”

Jansen said the economy is growing at the same rate as the inflation rate.

“You’d like to grow a little faster than the inflation rate,” Jansen said. “Retail sales in the area have been about 3 percent over last year’s value which is basically just inflation so in terms of purchasing power of sales, it hasn’t really gone up yet, but they haven’t gone down.”

Jarrad McLeod, owner of the Sleep Station in College Station said business has been good, but it’s kind of a mixed bag. Sales dropped in 2023 after surging during the pandemic, however, 2023′s numbers are still better than 2019 before the pandemic hit.

“The COVID years were a boom in our industry, so you have to take those years out when you’re looking at it,” Mcleod said. “Looking back to 2019 it was up but things are very different. We’re a little bit tighter with our money now than we were during COVID times.”

Ever since the pandemic one of the biggest challenges McLeod said his business is facing is finding employees.

“It’s harder to find good people. We’re lucky here in the aspect we hire kids when they’re fairly young and we keep them all the way through until they’re out of school. Our store managers are guys who have been with us for a long time,” McLeod said.

It’s the same story for Chef Tai Lee who owns multiple restaurants in BCS such as Urban Table, Solt and Kanji Shushi. He said it started in 2022 and continued in 2023.

“A qualified hard-working individual is always a challenge,” Lee said. “We do have a blessing of living here in Aggieland where we get a lot of good Aggies. I think a lot of these younger folks and older folks have found other industries or other ways of making money so restaurants and hospitality is not their top priority in terms of a job search.”

Lee said another challenge is inflation which had people cutting back on how much they eat out. Business has become a mix bag with some of Lee’s restaurants doing better than others.

“The total number of restaurants here in BCS has increased, so we’re fighting for the smaller crowd,” Lee said. “We are down about 20 percent compared to our peak at 2019 and we have somewhat recovered from 2020 and 2021. but 2022 was actually a better year for us on a number maybe because people were having a little revenge dining out.”

With 2024 being an election year both Lee and McLeod shared concerns about that will affect spending and the economy.

“Historically speaking those are some of the uncertainty years, so the big purchases tend to get hold off on it, folks tend to dine out. what I’m hoping for is the feds will actually lower the interest rate on it and that will give a little bit more of a discretionary income for folks to go out and dine out more,” Lee said.

Some other stats from PERC for 2023 include year-over-year home values in BCS which increased by 3.8 percent, and table sales which increased by 3.7 percent. Hotel revenue was also up in Bryan by 5.5 percent and in College Station by 6.3 percent.