Watch the national news for any length of time and you may begin to think that the world will soon come to an end, at least economically.

But despite recent downturns at the national, state and local levels, our current situation is nowhere near the bottom our community has seen, local leaders say.

Although our county’s most recent unemployment rate is just a bit below the national average, it’s half as much as it was in 1986 when the bottom fell out of the oil industry.

That’s not to say that people aren’t suffering in our community.

Losing a job is devastating for most folks, especially if there’s no immediate hope for a new job on the horizon.

However, looking at the current situation from an historical perspective, things are much better than we all may first think.

From a community leadership perspective, perhaps now is the best possible time to be rebuilding our community’s economic development efforts.

The logic being that the economic tide is out all across the state, nation and world.

During this period of economic low tide, our community may do well by rebuilding our “boat” better and stronger so that when the tide rises across the world, we’re better positioned to take advantage of it and ride into the future.