Sunshine state lags nation in productivity

Metropolitan regions across Florida scored poorly on a new report that analyzes employee productivity and employee growth during a three year-period, 2009-2011, when the economy was supposedly in recovery.

The April report, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, probed the growth, or lack thereof, in output per employee and the labor force increase in each metropolitan statistical area. The report is based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Fed.

Two of the bottom five regions, out of the 100 largest MSAs in the country, were in Florida: Lakeland-Winter Haven was last, with a -2.1% drop in combined productivity and total employment increase. The North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton region, meanwhile, fell -0.4% from 2009 to 2011, according to the report, for the fifth-worst rank in the country. Significantly, the Sarasota-Bradenton region had 1.7% in employment increase in that time frame, so the drop was based on a -2.1% decrease in employee productivity.

The Cape Coral-Fort Myers region had the eighth-worst rank out of the 100 largest MSAs in the U.S., with a combined score of roughly zero, the report shows. The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater region, however, by comparison to Gulf Coast and other Florida MSAs, was dynamic, with 2.3% growth in employee productivity plus employee growth. That was good for 74th place nationwide, ahead of Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach and Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford.

The explanation for the scores, the authors write, is essentially the old standby: Follow the money.

“On one end of the distribution are MSAs that continued to struggle with the effects of the housing boom and the subsequent bust. Metropolitan areas in the 'sand states' of Florida, Nevada, California, and Arizona populate this lower end of the growth distribution,” the report states. “The upper end...tends toward MSAs associated with natural resource extraction or high-tech industries. In addition, several metros associated with automobile assembly also showed significant growth, as production of vehicles picked up markedly over this period.”