By Ronald J. Hansen | The Arizona Republic
Don’t look for Arizona’s usual rapid economic growth to come back any time soon.
Elliott D. Pollack, who runs a Scottsdale consulting firm that usually offers one of the more optimistic economic voices in Arizona, joined a growing chorus Friday telling 900 business leaders the state’s fortunes remain on a slow path ahead.
“We’ve made an amazing recovery (in Arizona), but it’s not back to where it was. The same thing for Phoenix,” Pollack told the group, assembled at the Arizona Biltmore for an annual economic outlook hosted by the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce.
“Unfortunately for Arizona, we’ve only recovered 63 percent of the jobs from the previous peak and in greater Phoenix, just under 70 percent of the jobs,” he said. “We entered the recession earlier. We left it later. But we have not fully recovered yet. That full recovery, which I thought would be by 2015, now to my eye appears to be pushed out to at least 2016.”
