A study by economists and industry experts at High Point University finds that the home furnishings cluster generated an economic impact of $8.25 billion on the Triad region in 2006.

That includes industry output as well as employment and takes into account major supporting industries, wholesale and retail sales and the High Point Market as well as manufacturing, according to the authors.

The cluster as a whole employed around 69,000 people in the region, they found.

Using data from multiple sources from 2004 and extrapolated to 2006, the researchers found that despite its flight to cheaper overseas labor markets in recent year, furniture manufacturing still produced $4.8 billion in total industry output and employed 34,000 people.

The High Point Market, which happens twice each year and is the industry’s largest trade show, has an economic impact of $1.1 billion and itself accounts for about 13.5 percent of the total industry impact in the region. The study says 12,774 jobs, about 19.5 percent of all Triad furniture jobs, are created by the Market.

High Point, which bills itself as the Furniture Capital of the World, is the center of a bit less than half of the cluster’s total regional activity, $3.93 billion and about 31,000 jobs, the study found. The furniture cluster is responsible for 20 percent or more of High Point’s total industrial output

Source

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Furniture. Tags: Furniture, HIGH POINT, High Point University, retail, retail sales, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.