WHAT WE DO
Economic Mobility
Within the neighborhoods surrounding the HUB, decades of disinvestment have left sweeping pockets of blight and vacancy. In 2000, the population was approximately 12,000 and by 2021, it declined to 9,396. The area expects very modest growth of less than 1% through 2026.
While this is true, the city of Augusta has a strong and diverse economy with many employers anchored in and around the neighborhood. This includes a thriving military presence and growing nucleus of national cyber security. Healthcare, advanced manufacturing, and government administration round out the economy, offering a vast array of employment opportunities.
The challenge for any future plan will be to connect all of these dots, and create a critical mass of visible reinvestment to build the momentum necessary to alter people’s perceptions that the tide is at last changing.
INVESTING IN PEOPLE
There is a mismatch between jobs in the neighborhood and jobs of residents: most employed neighborhood residents (81%) work outside of the neighborhood boundary. Meanwhile there are 30,446 jobs within the neighborhood, but 98% of those are taken by workers from outside the neighborhood.
There is not a shortage of jobs within the neighborhood. But many of the jobs within the neighborhood likely require bachelors or advanced degrees. The number of people who have a bachelors or advanced degree is twice as high for people working in the neighborhood (26%) as completed to people living in the neighborhood (13%). The HUB Augusta Collaborative and its partners must address this and related challenges if upward economic mobility is to be a possibility for residents.
CHOICE ECONOMIC DATA
