Youngstown is sort of the “second tier”, too,  but gets a special post as it’s GMP is in a lower range than Dayton, Toledo, and Akron. 

 

In this post Youngstown/Warren is compared with Flint as another Midwest regional economy historically oriented around a single industry and Fort Wayne, as a comparably sized regional economy that is more diversified.    Though one has to acknowledge that today eds and meds and certainly the auto industry are probably as or more significant to Youngstown/Warren vis a vis steel.

 

 

The adjusted GMP numbers.  Youngstown had a good, albeit slower growth GMP number until the declines at the end of the decade, probably reflecting the move into recession.  Yet Fort Wayne was performing fairly well, too.

 

 

 

The Flint GMP started to decline earlier in the decade.

 

The performance numbers, which sort of mask the trends one see’s in the GMP time series.

 

 

 

 

Although Youngstowns’ GMP decline was so steep that it ended up with negative growth the actual trend might be worse for Flint.

 

Per Capita GMP

 

The per capita GMPs are more comparable in size.

 

 

It’s interesting to see the stability in the Fort Wayne number, and the ongoing declines in Flint.

 

The performance numbers for GMP. 

 

 

 

….Though Youngstown saw a net decline in it’s adjusted GMP the per capita GMP numbers shows an increase, actually even better than the per capita numbers for Fort Wayne.  Wonder why that was? 

 

 

It's similar to what's happened in Cleveland.  One possibility is that industrial employment is falling faster than industrial output, thus, low  or even negative GMP growth, but high GMP per capita growth.  What would be interesting is comparing it to wages to see who is getting the benefit of employees' increased productivity.

It's because the population of Youngstown is dropping faster than the GMP.

^

Yes, that could be an explanation.  Less people together with a steady state or even declining economy could still show up as an increase in the per capita number.  Which makes me question the worth of this per capita measure without some sort of an adjustment for population growth or decline.

Well, it sheds a different light on "growth".  High per capita growth in the context of low or no overall growth tells you something about a metro economy.  A metro economy with high overall GMP growth and low per capita GMP growth tells you something about their economy, too.