By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR — Despite the current bad economic news nationally, Mercer County specifically and New Jersey in general are in a good position to benefit from an eventual recovery and should focus on the future, said speakers at the 4th Mercer County Economic Summit on Thursday.
”We don’t have to belabor the point that this is not a good time for our nation, for the state, for Mercer County,” said Jerold Zaro, chief of the New Jersey Office of Economic Growth.
”Things are not, not all bleak,” Mr. Zaro told the audience at the conference center of Mercer County Community College. “There is an ancient proverb: you can’t control the wind but you can adjust your sails. That is what we should be doing, adjusting our sails,” he said.
”We have a great head start on the rest of the nation,” Mr. Zaro said. “Now is the time to show courage, conviction and creativity,” he said, adding area businesses need “to position ourselves at the forefront of the economic recovery to come.”
Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes, noted that more people were in attendance at the economic summit on Thursday afternoon than at the same event a year ago. “That is telling. It’s telling about where we want to go with our businesses, where we want to go with our economy, where we want to go with our region,” Mr. Hughes said.
Despite a 6.1 percent unemployment rate for the county in February — “the highest unemployment rate in this region in 15 years” — and drastically slowing ratable growth, Mr. Hughes said “I think the future is very very bright for Mercer County.”
Home values have stayed “relatively high” compared to other regions, Mercer County has an enviable transportation infrastructure, and “we have the amenities that people look for when they place a business or place employees,” Mr. Hughes said.
”I think we have plenty to be optimistic about in Mercer County and we will be,” he said.
Herb Taylor, an economist and vice president and corporate secretary with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, also sounded a positive note. He seconded Mr. Hughes, noting that in the real estate market “this area has done relatively well.”
He said the results of the most recent quarterly survey of economists and forecasters, conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, indicate “we are at the worst point in this economic downturn and we see improvement from here on out.”
Predictions of a recovery later this year and early next could be wrong, Mr. Taylor said. Of the survey’s prediction of a modest recovery in real gross domestic product in the second half of 2009, and a gradual reduction in monthly jobs lost, Mr. Taylor said “there is a lot of uncertainty around that forecast.”
The economic summit is organized by Mercer County and the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce.

