About This Map

This map visualizes GDP growth rates for 150 Extended Metropolitan Areas (EMAs), with options to view a forecast of the one-year GDP growth rate for 2024 and to see how GDP has changed over a one-, five- or 10-year period.

The side menu offers several ways to filter the data, including:

Hover over each EMA to see its GDP, employment and productivity growth rates as well as these metrics’ ranks among the selected EMA group.

About These Charts

These charts show the employment and GDP shares of selected sectors for every EMA economy. These metrics are an important indicator of the industries driving an EMAs growth and productivity. Some sectors, such as Finance and Real Estate, produce more GDP per worker than others, such as Leisure and Hospitality. EMAs with more of their workforce employed in high-output industries tend to have a larger growth engine than EMAs showing an industry mix weighted toward lower-productivity sectors.

Use the “Sector” radio buttons to choose which Bureau of Labor Statistics sector to visualize and the “Group” checkboxes to filter for EMA group size as well as to include the U.S. average.

You can quickly find a particular EMA using the “Highlight EMA” search bar and display only the EMAs within their principal U.S. state using the “State” pull-down menu. Principal state is determined by where the majority of an EMA's population resides.

Hover over the EMA bars for the selected sector's share and where that metric ranks among the selected group.

About This Chart

This chart shows the relationship between an EMA's labor productivity and the share of its workforce in high-tech industries with a bachelor's degree or higher. The dashed line visualizes the linear relationship between the two indicators, illustrating an additional productivity gain of $10K for an EMA, on average, for every 1 percentage point increase in its share of workers in high-tech industries with a bachelor's degree or higher.

While there is a clear relationship between a workforce's educational attainment and its productivity, having a college degree is an imperfect proxy for measuring worker skill level. There are many high-productivity jobs that require worker training outside of the traditional pathways captured in our educational attainment dataset. We seek to improve upon these analyses by including alternative measures of worker skill level.

Use the “Group” checkboxes to filter EMAs by group size and include the U.S. average.

Hovering over the dots reveals the EMA's productivity and employment share. Hover over the dashed line to show the slope and intercept of the linear relationship for the EMAs in the selected groups. Find any EMA in the plot using the “Highlight EMA” search box.

About This Chart

This chart shows EMA productivity growth over a 10-year period, from 2014 through the 2024 forecast. The first two columns display the EMA name and group, according to size. The third column shows EMA productivity, in thousands of dollars, and its path from 2014 to 2024. The fourth column features EMA annualized productivity growth rate, and the last column shows the annualized employment growth rate over the 10-year period.

Clicking the respective column header allows you to sort alphabetically, by size, by the EMAs' 2024 productivity levels, by productivity growth or by employment growth. The buttons at the chart's top filter the table by size, including only the EMAs in the largest 50, midsize 100, or all 150. The U.S. average is included in all groupings to illustrate where the U.S. average resides within each group.

Use the search box to find a specific EMA or type in a state name to compare EMAs found principally in the same U.S. state.

Why This Is Important

GDP is a key indicator reflecting an economy's overall output – its size – and this metric has two main drivers: employment and productivity. These components are essential for evaluating an EMA's potential economic growth.

Employment: Employment growth is a fundamental indicator of a healthy economy. More jobs signal an EMA's economic expansion, showing that more people are earning an income, thereby increasing consumption and creating a larger tax base for funding public services.

Productivity: Productivity is a measure of worker efficiency in creating goods and providing services. An EMA's productivity has a strong and positive relationship with its average income, meaning that productivity growth is a key measure of increases in standards of living.

Our EMA indicator rankings compare metrics within the EMA group selected in the side menu – the largest 50, the midsize 100, or all 150 – meaning that these standings give a measure's strength relative to other EMAs rather than providing an overall assessment.

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American Growth Project - About

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The purpose, our methods and our people

Watch the American Growth Project video to meet our experts and discover the power of our regional economic indicators.

Experts

Greg Brown
Founder and Research Director, Institute for Private Capital; Van and Kay Weatherspoon Distinguished Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School; Faculty Director, Luther Hodges Scholars
Gerald Cohen
Chief Economist
Sarah Dickerson
Assistant Research Professor and Research Economist
Camelia Kuhnen
Director of Research, Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise; Faculty Director, NCGrowth; and Professor of Finance and Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Scholar, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Mark Little
Executive Director, NCGrowth
Paige Ouimet
Executive Director, Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise; Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School