Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Bay area takes a regional dip

Slower job growth, weak wages and high housing costs drop the area in a ranking of Southern hubs.

By James Thorner
Published April 18, 2007

If the Tampa Bay area's economy were a golf game, we'd be driving our balls into the rough.

In a second annual warts-and-all examination of the area's business health, the region dropped from third to fourth place when measured against five other competitive metro areas: Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Jacksonville and Raleigh-Durham.

It's called the Regional Economic Scorecard and it's put out by the Tampa Bay Partnership, a seven-county economic development agency.

A dip in new home permits and job growth in 2006 - both linked to the housing downturn - helped knock us down a notch in the competition with the other Sun Belt metro areas.

The scorecard also flagged longer-standing deficiencies: the lowest average wages and the highest housing costs relative to those wages. We're the weakest at attracting venture capital and trail in patents.

On the plus side, the area had the lowest unemployment among the surveyed regions - 3 percent - and the second best student SAT scores.

"Our competitors don't sit still," said Larry Henson, the partnership's "intelligence officer" who compiled the report. "We can't either."

A comparison with Dallas is telling. Dallas' average wage is $50,220 vs. $36,406 in the Tampa area. But the Texas metro's median home price is just $147,000, vs. $247,000 for Tampa.

University of Florida economist David Denslow said positive news lies hidden in the negative numbers. Low wages reflect not just lower job skills in our mostly service economy, but also the state's amenities relative to its competitors, Denslow said. Simply put, employers pay less because workers find Florida's climate so appealing.

"You ask people where they want to live and more say they'd rather live in Tampa than Dallas," Denslow said. "The same thing that gives us a disadvantage in wages gives us an advantage in recruiting."

The partnership suggested some of the area's shortcomings could self-correct. Home prices have recently declined and the scorecard, using numbers from mid 2006, didn't capture that trend. Other concerns, such as attracting higher-quality jobs, demand more action. Witness the tax incentives used to lure high-tech companies such as SRI in St. Petersburg.

"It's a slow, difficult process to fundamentally alter an economy," Henson said.

James Thorner can be reached at thorner@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3313.

[Last modified April 17, 2007, 23:23:00]