In April, the Hull College of Business Augusta Leading Economic Index returned to positive growth after last month's blip. The LEI increased 0.8% from March. The index has increased 6.1% from April 2014.     

I have been calculating the Augusta LEI and writing this report for five years. In that time Augusta has seen some tremendous growth (I believe they say this is correlation not causation!). Total employment has grown by 8 percent, with three major sectors contributing to that growth (leisure and hospitality, transportation and utilities, and health and education services). Retail and business and professional services, both large employers, have also seen decent growth.      

If your industry does not appear on this list, it has underperformed the local average. The housing market has also continued to struggle: the Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index for Augusta has fallen from 166.52 in the first quarter of 2010 to 155.22 in the first quarter of this year.