On Thursday, the Downtown Design District will host its annual Holiday Walk.
A few dozen stores along the Whitaker Street corridor from Jones to Gaston streets will stay open through the evening. They’ll be offering specials, serving refreshments and generally adding to the warmth of the Christmas season in Savannah.
On Friday, the merchants around Wright Square will celebrate their 10th Annual Holiday Open House, featuring about 20 locally-owned enterprises.
There will be entertainers in the streets around Wright Square and ample in-store offerings. Music lovers might want to note that the great local crooner Trae Gurley will be performing inside the Wright Square Antique Mall on West State Street.
For those who don’t know, Wright Square is on Bull Street between Broughton Street and Oglethorpe Avenue. Many of the participating businesses occupy narrow storefronts on State and York streets.
Both of these downtown shopping districts have remained close to full occupancy right through the recession and the sluggish recovery.
Despite the difficult economy, individual entrepreneurs have found niches in which they could thrive.
At the same time, we’ve seen consumers increasingly focus on the benefits of buying local.
I routinely hear concerns about chains overrunning downtown, but that’s certainly not happening in either Wright Square or the Downtown Design District.
Given the relatively small square footage of the retail spaces around Wright Square and in the Downtown Design District, it’s likely that both will retain their distinct, local feel for the foreseeable future.
But don’t get complacent.
Many downtown retailers are relatively new and haven’t established consistent clienteles. A fair number of locally-owned businesses are under-capitalized, which means they don’t have the cash on hand to survive a sudden change of fortune.
And, of course, the holidays are a make-or-break period for some.
Not that you’ll see or feel any of those tensions at the upbeat annual events on Thursday and Friday evenings.
You’ll just see a lot of local shoppers — and shopkeepers — enjoying themselves and the season.
Local employment recovery seems to be gaining steam
The latest estimates from the Georgia Department of Labor show accelerating improvement in the Savannah metro area job market.
In October, there were 154,600 payroll jobs in Chatham, Effingham and Bryan counties. That’s up pretty dramatically from 150,100 in October 2011.
We’re adding jobs about twice as fast as the rate of population growth. That bodes really well as we head into the final month of holiday shopping.
Then things will turn. Even in a strong economy, January is always a terrible month for employment, but maybe we’ll have enough momentum to forestall the sorts of dramatic declines we’ve seen in some recent years.
The broad-based nature of the job growth is especially heartening.
Of the major sectors included in the payroll employment estimates, none showed declines over the past year.
The category that includes construction jobs had 5,800 jobs in October — the same number as a year ago.
Financial activities remained flat, too, and federal government employment declined slightly.
But every other sector was up.
Of course, no matter how much things pick up, some folks are still facing tough times.
For example, we had 10,000 payroll construction jobs in October 2006, compared to those 5,800 last month.
And we had total nonfarm payroll employment of 158,200 in October 2006. We’ll be lucky if we hit that number by the end of 2013.
A word about government employment
We hear a lot of complaints about the size of government.
Many of those complaints seem valid.
But total government employment — local, state and federal — in the Savannah metro area only increased from 22,900 to 23,100 over the past year. And take note that in October 2008, there were also 23,100 jobs.
Those numbers include many essential positions, including teachers, police officers and sanitation workers.
Consider that we have more residents than we had a year ago — and more tourists, too.
Plus we’re in the midst of a growing public clamor for more aggressive crime fighting.
Sure, governments can become more efficient — they can increase productivity without necessarily adding employees.
But only to a point.
Eventually, a larger population and an increasing demand for services will necessitate more public employees.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net and http://www.billdawers.com. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.