What Percent of U.S. Counties Saw Declines in Economic Output Last Year?
The government center in Forsyth County, North Carolina. Bryan Pollard / Shutterstock.com
A new report from the National Association of Counties looks at GDP and other economic indicators in 3,069 counties.
Despite signs that county economies are improving around the United States, economic output in about one-third of them declined last year, according to a report issued on Tuesday.
Published by the National Association of Counties , the report assesses economic performance in the nation’s 3,069 counties by looking at changes in four indicators. These indicators include: the number of jobs, unemployment rates, economic output and median home prices.
While county economies have bounced back to some extent from the doldrums of the Great Recession, the report indicates that gains have been uneven across each of the four metrics, and have also varied based on each county’s size and location.
“In 2015, we have seen accelerated recovery across the 3,069 county economies, but not on economic output,” said NACo’s research director, Emilia Istrate, in a video the organization posted online Tuesday. She also noted: “Sixteen percent—one, six—of county economies have not recovered on any of the economic indicators that we analyzed.”
"The large variation in the recovery, and growth across county economies, explain why everyday Americans don't feel the good national economic numbers," Istrate added.
Economic output is examined in terms of gross domestic product , or GDP, which measures the total value of goods and services produced by a county economy. Declines took place last year in 36 percent of county economies, according to the report. These declines were mostly concentrated in smaller counties located in southern and midwestern states.
Ten percent of the counties that experienced declines have economies that depend heavily on the oil and gas industry, which has been hard-hit over the last year by plummeting oil prices.
On the upside, 214 county economies, by 2015, had recovered to pre-recession levels on all four of the indicators featured in the report. But these localities make up only 7 percent of the county economies in the nation.
Unemployment rates and median home prices were the two areas where county-level economic gains sped up the most last year, according to the report.
Unemployment rates in 462 counties returned to pre-recession lows in 2015. The number of counties that crossed that same threshold in 2014 was 183. Median home prices returned to pre-recession levels in 448 counties in 2015, compared to 178 in 2014.
The report’s authors also looked at changes in employee wages.
They found that 47 percent of county economies saw increases in real wages between 2009 and 2014. In another 28 percent of county economies, during that same time period, real wages fell. Real wages are adjusted to reflect changes in purchasing power.
A full copy of the NACo report can be found here .
Bill Lucia is a Reporter for Government Executive’s Route Fifty. (Photo by Bryan Pollard / Shutterstock.com)
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