Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Soldiers of the 31st Combat Air Support Hospital walked to an airplane during their deployment to Iraq in 2007. A new economic forecast says Fort Bliss expansion will play big part in the positive outlook for the next 20 years. (Times file photo)

El Paso's economy and jobs are projected to outpace national growth in the next 20 years with the help of Fort Bliss expansion, and El Paso's population will exceed 1 million people by 2027.

That's the gist of the latest long-term economic forecast from Tom Fullerton, an economics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and co-author of "Borderplex Long-Term Economic Trends to 2027."

The forecast is a bit rosier than the long-term forecast released last year.

The economies of El Paso, Las Cruces, Juárez and Chihuahua City should show "fairly impressive growth" in the next 20 years, Fullerton said.

El Paso's economy as measured by total personal income is projected to reach $60.2 billion in 2027. It was an estimated $19.1 billion last year.

El Paso's per capita income is projected to grow from an estimated $25,594 last year to $59,226 in 2027. That will remain well behind the national level, but the gap will "narrow by a small margin," Fullerton said.

Jose Sanchez, 44, a Northeast El Paso resident who was job hunting last week at a job fair for a new prison near Chaparral, N.M., said the bright economic forecast "sounds great." But the present national economic downturn is a big concern, he said. And finding good-paying jobs in El Paso is not easy, he said.

"The military growth is great. But I was a civilian employee at Fort Bliss (about 20 years ago) when it was downsizing," Sanchez said. "I want to latch on to every opportunity I can. I don't think (projected growth) will be now and forever."

El Paso's economic output is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 3.4 percent in the next 20 years, compared with a national average rate of 2.7 percent a year as projected by Global Insight, a Boston-area economic forecast firm.

El Paso jobs are projected to grow at an average annual rate of 1.9 percent in the next 20 years while unemployment continues to decline. National job growth is projected at an annual average rate of 0.8 percent during the same period as forecast by Global Insight.

Military employment is projected to rise from an estimated 13,500 last year to almost 30,000 in 2027, the UTEP forecast shows.

That means military employment will grow from almost 4 percent of total El Paso County employment in 2007 to almost 6 percent in 2027, Fullerton reported.

The UTEP report uses troop numbers based on U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data, Fullerton said.

Numbers reported by Fort Bliss are different: Troop population of about 17,000 now and an expected troop population of about 37,000 by 2012.

Mike Santamaria, vice president of Mountain Vista Builders, said he agrees El Paso's economic outlook is "definitely sunny, not cloudy" for at least the next five years because of Fort Bliss expansion. "Who knows what will happen after that?"

El Paso's housing market slowed down last year. But Mountain Vista and other builders have seen more buyers in the market recently, Santamaria said.

Mountain Vista this year returned to building more affordable homes at a price range of $120,000 to $150,000 and buyers are responding, he said.

Single-family housing starts are projected to steadily grow from about 3,800 last year to about 5,400 in 2027. Santamaria said that growth looks low if El Paso's population is expected to exceed 1 million people in 2027.

Multi-family housing is expected to show strong growth in coming years, the forecast shows.

"When jobs and (more) population comes to town, there's more need for housing. The difficult part is figuring how much for-rent housing, and how much multi-family (housing) is needed," said Tom Bohannon, president and owner of Bohannon Development Corp. His company just completed a 342-unit apartment complex in Northeast, and it plans to begin construction on two more apartment complexes this year.

Retail sales are projected to grow from an estimated $8.3 billion last year to almost $22 billion in 2027.

Danny Vaswani, owner of a chain of Cleopatra perfume stores and Time Square watch stores in El Paso and a Downtown jewelry store, said Fort Bliss expansion already appears to be helping his stores in Bassett Place. He expects the post's expansion and continued growth in Juárez to increase sales.

"El Paso is not a city where (we have) so much ups and downs" in the economy, Vaswani said. "We are a pretty stable city."

The Juárez maquiladora industry is projected to remain strong in the next 20 years, with employment growing from an estimated 254,000 last year to almost 471,000 in 2027, the forecast shows.

The number of factories will not grow much, but the size of the plants will increase "as they become more mechanized," Fullerton said.

Juárez's population is projected to grow from an estimated 1.4 million last year to more than 2.3 million in 2027.

Source: UTEP "Borderplex Long-Term Economic Trends to 2027."

More information
http://academics.utep.edu/border