My Home Town
I really feel we are very lucky, in the fact that the "recession" doesn't appear to be very visible in Oklahoma.
While no city or state is ever completely immune to downturns in the economy, near the end of '08, Forbes named Oklahoma City (our state capital) the most recession-proof city in the U.S. Crediting a strong housing market and falling unemployment rate, Forbes says that Oklahoma City is “best positioned to ride out the current crisis. We feel this pertains to the whole state. We were in the "city" yesterday and wanted to eat out and all the bigger restaurants had at least a minimum wait time of 1 hour. The shopping centers were full of cars and the usual amount of people seemed to be on the streets and highways.
I see no rash of foreclosures and here in Enid everywhere you look there are homes and condos going up. We do have an Air Force Base here which makes us very lucky and we do have families coming and going every year. We train military pilots to fly and we train members of all the services, not just Air Force. They are building a huge Army Reserve center at the south end of the base which will add many more jobs to Enid soon.
Enid is also the medical center of NW Oklahoma. We have two large medical centers with state of the art medical equipment and lots of good doctors. We always seem to have lots of medical type jobs listed especially nurses. We have two campuses of one state university and one state college and a large technology center.
I would bet there aren't a lot of people in Oklahoma who invest much in stocks and bonds and for sure don't put all their savings in them. We have a lot of local banks and credit unions who seem to be in fine shape. We haven't had a single bank or CU close in Enid. Knock on wood because we have had some of the lowest gasoline prices in the nation for a long, long time. Fast food places always seem to have long lines and full slots, which tells us people are still eating out. We have a lot of neat trivia compiled about our town and an exciting history. We have a symphony and a community theatre, good schools and "thank God" not a lot of crime.
Enid was featured on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Wednesday, 11 Jan 06 as one of the top five “up-and-coming” areas of the United States. judged on location, desirability, new developments, average home prices and percentage of increase over the last two years. Enid competed against 3,700 other communities around the country to earn a spot on the list. Our family are the owners of EnidBuzz.com, a website/blog that covers our town from one side to the other. Over the years we have been chosen as a great place to live, raise kids and build a future.
posted by Ann at
11:50 AM
3 Comments:
The recession really hasn't hit us here in upstate new york either. most are employed at one of the 3 prisons, or border guards, hospital workers, etc. the average price for a home is about $50K so there was no over-inflated housing value bubble. things go on here pretty much as usual.
It is very heartening to know that some areas aren't really that affected by the recession, unlike in California. Several regular train commuters I used to see daily aren't there anymore and the rumors are they lost their jobs.
Civil service employees must take unpaid days off. We're about to lose 200+ teachers in our small school district. I've given up hope for my once-expected promotion (which I counted on when we bought a weekend home at the beach, HA!). :(
Anyone wanna have mai tais with me and sing "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen..."?
We seem to be doing o.k. here in Kentucky. There are some houses that are empty but home prices have not dropped here. Like you said our restaurants are always full, too.
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