The Upper Hunter's economy is on the up with a falling unemployment rate and a rise in commodity prices increasing confidence in the region.
Changes to the resources sector are thought to have played a big part in the results according to the Hunter Research Foundation Centre's (HRF) latest report.
There's been a massive turnaround in the economy with the jobless rate falling from 8.6 per cent in December 2015 to just 4 per cent last December.
Lead economist from HRF Dr Anthea Bill says the rising employment rate is a huge win for the region and it's thanks to the movements in commodity prices, particularly improvements in the price of thermal coal.
"It's softened a little bit in the beginning of 2017 but even over the year from March 2017 to March 2016, there was a 54 per cent improvement in thermal coal prices and that's obviously flowing through into direct employment and sub contractors."
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"We can see there's been a sustained improvement in business confidence and rising measures of business performance, profitability and trading and also rising forward facing measures such as hiring intentions and capital investment expenditure predictions in the December quarter."
Even resident's expectations for the region's economy are on the rise for the next three months at its highest since 2005 with business owners confident the local economy has and will improve for the short and long term.
"Generally, overall there's been renewed regional confidence, so we've seen a big jump in business confidence in terms of the regional outlook, so the outlook for the Hunter overall, and we've seen market improvements in householders confidence better than it has been for more than a decade," said Dr Anthea Bill.
However, housing figures were the weak link, with the median house price falling from around $345,000 in December 2015 to around $328,000 last year.
