Partnership scorecard places Tampa Bay last among similar regions
Tampa Bay Business Journal - by Margaret Cashill Staff writer
Tampa Bay is feeling the sting of the economic downturn. The proof is in the results of the Tampa Bay Partnership’s latest economic scorecard, which ranks the region last among six similar metropolitan areas.
Jacksonville, Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte, N.C., and Raleigh/Durham, N.C., all ranked higher than Tampa Bay based on the sum of scores in areas of employment and workforce, income and productivity, housing, innovation, education and transportation.
Tampa Bay’s last-place ranking continues a trend that began with the Partnership’s May scorecard.
Still, the 25 indicators show some positive signs, said Larry Henson, business intelligence officer with the Partnership.
In the May report, decliners led improvers four to one. This time around, more indicators have improved than declined. Of 19 indicators that reflect new data, eight remained unchanged, six improved and five declined.
The rankings are analogous to the stock market in terms of gainers and losers, Henson said. “Maybe in this business cycle we have seen the bottom.”
After losing more than 33,500 jobs since the third quarter of 2007, Tampa Bay ranked sixth, or last, in employment and workforce.
In terms of income and productivity, Tampa Bay’s ranking moved from fourth to third with improvements in the relative growth rates of average wage, median household income and per capita personal income.
Tampa Bay still ranked last in housing, although Henson noted that since the May report the region’s housing is no longer the most expensive of the six metropolitan areas.
In the category of innovation, which measures patents, National Science Awards, venture capital and university research and development, Tampa Bay remained fifth.
With no new data for the education category, Tampa Bay remained third.
Tampa Bay’s rank fell from fourth to last in the category of transportation. Although its metrics strengthened for every indicator, so did the metrics of the other cities.
“It’s not enough for us to just improve,” Henson said. “We have to improve more than they do.”
Stuart Rogel, president and chief executive of the Tampa Bay Partnership, said that the region could work its way out of the cycle by maintaining its diverse economy and by creating more higher-paying jobs and more jobs in general.
“What we’ve learned is that we have a lot of work to do in this region,” Rogel said.
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