The Growth Factor

The Growth Factor

By Francis X. Gilpin

Associate Editor

The Tampa Bay Partnership's unveiling Jan. 13 of its first quarterly installment of a regional economic scorecard was yet another reminder of Tampa Bay and Florida's unshakable profile: We're always high on the quantitative growth charts, and always low on the qualitative essentials.

Based on the research results that measured six Sunbelt markets' business climates, the Bay area tied for second place with Raleigh-Durham. Charlotte was number one.

"We didn't know how it would all fall out," says Gwen J. Mitchell, a managing partner at Deloitte & Touche USA LLC's Tampa office and the "business intelligence chair" with the partnership.

The partnership graded the Bay area, Charlotte and the Research Triangle along with Atlanta, Dallas and Jacksonville in five categories:

• Employment and workforce;

• Income and productivity;

• Housing;

• Innovation; and

• Education.

To no surprise, the Bay area scored high in job and income growth. But it finished last in most categories measuring innovation and education.

The partnership report recalls a 2003 study by the Florida Chamber of Commerce's foundation, which concluded that the Sunshine State needs to diversify its economy. The New Cornerstone Report came out in favor of fostering more tech enterprises within the state and adopted many of the "creative communities" concepts that were being promoted at the time by famed economic development researcher Richard Florida.

Seven of the 20 data components in the survey were based on growth rates. Four of those seven components would tend to favor a metropolitan area with a fast-growing population, like Tampa.

The Bay area is creating jobs like crazy. The region, which includes Polk County by the partnership's definition, finished first with 51,000 new jobs during the most recent quarter, more than Atlanta, Jacksonville and Raleigh-Durham created in combination.

But Tampa was last in average yearly wage for the quarter, $32,962. Even Jacksonville, which scored among the lowest on most of the rest of the scorecard, had an average wage of $34,640. Atlanta, Dallas and Raleigh-Durham were all above $39,000.

But the partnership's scorecard lessens the impact of the Bay area's wages by emphasizing growth rates in income. To the absolute average wage, the partnership added three components tracking wage and income growth rates, which show Bay area catching up.

H. William Habermeyer Jr., president and chief executive of Progress Energy Florida who was the partnership's chairman last year, points out that the Bay area's unrelenting in-migration creates the need for more and more jobs in low-wage service industries. Those jobs cumulatively depress the region's overall average wage, says Habermeyer.

That could explain why the Bay area scored worst in the housing category. Unlike in the employment and income categories, the partnership focused less on growth measurements and more on affordability.

Conspicuously absent from the partnership's business-climate survey was an evaluation of transportation. Deloitte's Mitchell says her volunteer research team struggled to find objective data that would tell the partnership how traffic congestion figures into the Bay area's economic climate.

And it's not as though the partnership is ducking transportation issues. Listed at the top of the partnership's top five strategic initiatives is "transportation improvement."

HOW SUNBELT AREAS RANK WHEN 'GROWTH' FACTORS ARE EXCLUDED

The Tampa Bay area tied for second on a local booster group's scorecard of 20 components for a favorable business climate. When components with the word "growth" in their description are eliminated, however, a reshuffling of the 13 remaining criteria drops Tampa from second to fifth.

New Total Jobs Jobless Avg. Rental Home Venture University Science High Schl SAT 4-Yr. Post-grad

rank score created rate wage afford. afford. capital Patents research awards graduates scores degrees degrees

Raleigh/Durham 1 23 6 3 1 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Dallas 2 45 2 4 3 5 1 3 3 3 5 3 4 6 3

Atlanta 3 46 4 5 2 4 2 2 5 2 2 6 6 4 2

Charlotte 4 47 3 5 4 1 4 4 2 5 4 2 3 5 5

Tampa Bay 5 49 1 1 6 6 6 5 4 4 3 4 2 3 4

Jacksonville 6 61 5 2 5 3 5 6 6 6 6 5 4 2 6

The scorecard is available at www.tampabay.org Source: Review analysis of the Tampa Bay Partnership's winter 2005/2006 regional economic scorecard