America's Metros -- Winners... and Nonwinners

Oil prices tripled since 2003. Sunshine for the economies of metro areas on the Gulf of Mexico. But a cloud over the metros on the Great Lakes. John McCain's solution in Detroit: more nuclear power plants. Barack Obama's: reducing energy consumption, creating green jobs. These issues aren't going away.

The 25 metro areas with the fastest growth in incomes since 2003 are concentrated in the oil-and-gas-producing states like Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, in the financial markets of Greater New York, and in areas in California and Florida that benefited from the growth of credit through 2007. (Note: The oil-and-gas areas continue to prosper in 2008 as oil prices have held up. Credit, however, is shrinking with every bank writeoff.)

Top 25 Metro Areas: Change in Per Capita Income 2003-2007

Rank - Metro Area - 2007 PC Income $ - % Change from 2003
1 New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA 46,188 57.8
2 Midland, TX 52,294 53.4
3 Naples-Marco Island, FL 61,788 43.4
4 Gulfport-Biloxi, MS 36,390 43.2
5 Sebastian-Vero Beach, FL 58,144 42.7
6 Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA 34,966 40.1
7 Pascagoula, MS 32,992 39.8
8 Odessa, TX 31,788 39.2
9 Jacksonville, NC 34,282 39.0
10 Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, TX 34,717 38.2
11 Farmington, NM 29,183 37.9
12 Santa Fe, NM 45,230 36.9
13 Punta Gorda, FL 35,151 36.6
14 Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Goleta, CA 46,120 36.2
15 Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT 80,192 34.7
16 Fayetteville, NC 35,353 34.3
17 Lake Charles, LA 33,448 34.3
18 Casper, WY 47,354 33.5
19 Lafayette, LA 36,853 33.1
20 Tulsa, OK 40,227 32.1
21 Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 46,235 31.9
22 Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice, FL 48,498 31.2
23 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 61,337 31.1
24 Napa, CA 50,817 30.9
25 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 53,423 30.8
Source: Annual per capita metro income data from U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. See this source for notes on the data for the 363 metro statistical areas. Percent changes from the State Science and Technology Institute.

The cloudy America centered on the Great Lakes includes the industrial areas of Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, where manufacturing jobs are losing out to Chinese, European, Japanese and other competitors - compounded by the damage to heavy industry of higher oil costs. The low increase in Merced, CA metro per capita income appears to result from the influx of new immigrants with incomes below the area average. A number of well-known university towns are included in these nonwinning metros.

Bottom 25 Metro Areas: Change in Per Capita Income 2003-2007

Rank - Metro Area - 2007 PC Income $ - % Change from 2003
339 Saginaw-Saginaw Township North, MI 29,304 11.8
340 Springfield, OH 30,471 11.8
341 Danville, IL 27,153 11.7
342 Jackson, MI 28,996 11.6
343 Bay City, MI 30,232 11.5
344 Dover, DE 29,047 10.9
345 Kennewick-Pasco-Richland, WA 30,325 10.9
346 Muncie, IN 28,772 10.8
347 Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI 39,419 10.7
348 Morristown, TN 25,446 10.5
349 Rockford, IL 30,507 10.4
350 Muskegon-Norton Shores, MI 27,240 10.4
351 Sandusky, OH 35,187 9.7
352 Merced, CA 23,864 9.7
353 Kankakee-Bradley, IL 29,024 9.6
354 Ann Arbor, MI 41,233 9.4
355 Anderson, IN 29,912 9.1
356 Janesville, WI 30,990 9.1
357 Monroe, MI 33,167 9.0
358 Bloomington-Normal, IL 34,832 8.7
359 Mansfield, OH 28,241 7.9
360 Kokomo, IN 33,230 7.1
361 Flint, MI 29,347 5.1
362 Champaign-Urbana, IL 31,931 2.0
363 Springfield, IL 36,229 1.8
Source: Same as Top 25.

 

Comments

[robinhood2]

I was surprised to see New Orleans at the top of the Winners List. I guess it was all those po' folks leaving the 9th ward after Hurricane Katrina.

[KillTheMessenger]

Wait... Muncie, IN a metropolitan area???? By a very desperate definition, maybe.

Muncie is a small town of 65,000 people in the midst of a heavily agricultural area (at least that is what it looks like on Google Earth). It surely is the center... because there is nothing else there, there.

But how does it make a valid comparator for the economy of anything?

Kankakee-Bradley, IL? The same.
Janesville, WI? Ditto.
Anderson, IN? Virtually indistinguishable on the satellite map.
Merced, CA? It's almost hiking distance from the Sierra wilderness.

I venture to guess these places are probably economic losers since they were settled in first. Why are they supposed to show us anything? Except maybe that most of continental America has about as little to offer as the Black Forrest in Germany or the Pyrenees in France or most of the land locked provinces of China. Except for tourism and agricultural products, that is.

[therealredstateblues]

Do you know anything about Muncie IN?

First of all it is a college town and was a manufacturing town. Home of Ball State Univ.

Muncie has hemoraged manufacturing jobs by the thousands since NAFTA - recent high profile closures include Ball Containers ( muncie was once home of Ball corp) Borg Warner one of the cities biggest employers closed recently, a GM plant closed and of course all the sevice supply and support companies that depended on these mfg giants also closed up shop.

Muncie is noit that far from the metro areas of Indy, MArion/Anderson and Ft wayne - all of which too have lost staggering amounts of manufacturing jobs and major employers

[DuganS1]

In the case of the Borg Warner plant in Muncie, it was simply unprofitable and was sold to a Mexican company. You can't continue to run a business if it makes no money or loses money. For Borg Warner overall, they have operations in over 20 countries and had plants in Mexico since 1962 and Asia since 1964.

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/BorgWarner-Automotive-Inc-Company-History.html

I suspect that we'll soon see the American Axle US plants shut down for this reason as well. Considering the state of the auto industry and the economy in general, I still can't believe the unions went on strike and shut the plants down for a few months. The most recent earnings estimates for American Axle this year are hugely in the negative. The union workers will probably all lose their jobs and the production will shift the AXL's Mexican and Chinese plants.

Regarding NAFTA, the vast majority of the manufacturing jobs lost since the beginning of NAFTA in 1994 would have been lost even without NAFTA. In many cases, the factories that were closed were unprofitable, uncompetitive, or even obsolete. I still don't understand how people get upset about the Canada part of the agreement, but they apparently do.

[cityfellow]

Interesting list as it also includes micropolitan areas. Strange that New Orleans should lead when it's lost so much population. Nearby Pascagoula, MS has lucrative Naval shipbuilding contracts.

The odd New York Metropolitan Statistical Area - not what people in the region think of as the metro area -just makes the top list, hence listed separately above it is coastal Fairfield County with all that NYC FIRE wealth (& satellite operations in Stamford & Greenwich).

The four Florida areas on top are all big retirement magnets, ditto the two in New Mexico & Santa Barbara, CA.

The funny thing about the Texas entries are the absence of Dallas/Ft Worth - the state's most populous metro area, its IT jewel of Austin or booming San Antonio.

The loser list is also interesting. There is a negative halo running west across southern Michigan from Detroit (except for Lansing, the capital). But that seems to be the only major Great Lakes metropolitan expanse & beyond. Outstate Illinois is there but not Chicagoland. Miwaukee, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus & the Twin Cities are not there. Nor are Buffalo, Rochester, Akron/Canton or Toledo, with the latter, a small corporate hub on the cusp of losing all scheduled air service.. which is like not existing.

Perhaps one has to look further to see who's gotten this income? Does the "laity" know that economists refer to this as "massaging the data?"

Anyway, in Napa, at least, it's clearly not sour grapes ;-)