OUR VIEW: Openings should add spark to the economy

» New businesses — and the jobs that they bring — are expected to give us a little oomph as we recover from hard times

President Barack Obama says the worst of the recession probably is behind us.

If the country believes him, that’s probably true.

Public confidence plays a somewhat surprisingly big role in the health of our economy.

We’re pretty confident about the foreseeable future here in Culpeper with new businesses popping up and many existing ones weathering the storm.

We’ve mentioned many of the new businesses before, such as the Holiday Inn Express and renovated Pepper’s Restaurant at the south end of town.

At the north end, Allied Concrete of Charlottesville has opened a showroom and warehouse that will employ six people. The showroom will feature “hardscaping” materials for use in walkways, sidewalks, retaining walls and other such things.

In addition, the company’s ready-mix concrete plant near Brandy Station will stay open.

Not far from the showroom, Martin’s Grocery is preparing to open its 150th store this month in Culpeper Colonnade.

The full-service grocery store will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and will include a gas station. It also will provide 225 full- and part-time jobs.

These new jobs may not fill all of the economic gap left by the layoffs and furloughs we’ve all endured during this recession — including us at the Star-Exponent. But it can go a long way toward giving us a local spark we need as our economy enters its recovery.

We should note that jobs usually are the last segment of the economy to come back after a recession and the latest jobs data from the Virginia Employment Commission is for June, so it will take some time for even these jobs to be reflected in the unemployment rate.

We expect, however, that our unemployment rate will start to decline in the next couple of months and that will be good for all of us.