The Roanoke Times

File 2006 Production at the Volvo/Mack facility in Dublin supports the New River Valley's $1.2 billion annual manufacturing economy. Manufacturing makes up more than 28 percent of the economy in the New River Valley and more than 17 percent of the Roanoke metropolitan area's economy.

Your personal economy may look bleak.

Prices swell.

The housing market sags.

Perhaps your job is on the line.

What about Western Virginia's $15.8 billion economy as a whole? Can beleaguered consumers count on the regional marketplace to hold up with some predictability?

No one can say for sure. But if past performance continues, the regional economy will grow.

According to the first tally of the gross domestic product for each of the nation's 336 metropolitan areas, the economy of the Roanoke metropolitan area is Virginia's fourth-largest and the 145th largest nationally.

Hitting $10 billion in value early this decade, the Roanoke metro area economy grew to $11.42 billion in 2005, according to a 2007 report by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. It grew at a rate of about $100 million a year from 2001 to 2005.

Cuts in rail and banking shrank those historically strong industries over the years.

But the higher education and health care sectors look strong to John Knapp, a Virginia economist.

"To me, the hallmark of Roanoke is how resilient it's been over the years," said Knapp, senior economist at the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

Resilient, but not fast-growing. Roanoke, along with Blacksburg and some other rural Virginia metros are among the slowest growing regions economically in the United States, the BEA said.

The most rapidly expanding economies are in Florida, home to three of the 10 top-growth areas from 2001-05, and in Oregon, home to two.

The fastest growing Virginia metros are the one covering parts of Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., and the one for Winchester. On the other end of the chart, the Harrisonburg metro ranked second to last nationally.

Among Southwest Virginia communities, Lynchburg leads Blacksburg which, in turn, slightly leads Roanoke.

Knapp said big-box retailers in the New River Valley are collecting some dollars that used to be spent in Roanoke.

But New River's hefty government and manufacturing sectors are also at work.

Manufacturers contributed nearly one in three dollars of economic value in the New River Valley metro in 2005, versus about one in six in the Roanoke Valley. Government -- including Virginia Tech and Radford University -- contributed 23 percent of the New River Valley GDP, versus 11 percent in the Roanoke Valley.

The reason for Lynchburg's higher relative strength is a story like that of Blacksburg. Lynchburg has sizable manufacturing sector and colleges and universities, with Liberty University being the fastest growing, said William Mezger, a senior economist with the Virginia Employment Commission.