Business looking up

The local economy has rebounded significantly since the worst of the Great Recession, according to a presentation during the Business Summit and State of the City Address at the CARD Center on Friday (Jan. 29).

Mark Francis, 2015 chair of the Chico Chamber of Commerce board of directors, provided an economic snapshot of the third quarter of 2015. Building permits throughout the city have surged, totaling $28 million in the third quarter—three times greater than in the depths of the recession. Further, seasonally adjusted sales tax revenues have increased steadily for six years “and I don’t see that trend changing,” said Francis (pictured).

In the county overall, there are 9,100 more jobs than in late 2011, and Chico specifically has “recovered all of the jobs we lost in the recession,” he said.