The CRER has released its Spring 2025 forecast of employment growth in the Chattanooga Metropolitan Statistical Area for 2025 and 2026.
The forecast represents a downgrade that is due partly to revisions of recent job growth, but primarily to the softened national outlook in the wake of the tariff plans unveiled on April 2nd. The new CRER forecast is for net growth of 3,600 jobs in the metro area in 2025 rather than the 5,300 in our previous forecast.
Due to a combination of policy uncertainty and the negative growth effects of tariffs, many analysts have raised their probability of a national recession in 2025 to 50 percent or higher. To illustrate this possibility, we used the CRER model to forecast job growth in the event of a moderate three quarter recession in 2025.