US Outlook Report: Financial Services Catches The Wave of Growth
We already knew the U.S. economy grew last year, but we just got some interesting detail by industry and at the metro level on where growth is occurring. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) published its first estimate of 2013 and revised 2001-2012 real GDP figures by metropolitan area that revealed broad-based economic growth in 77 percent or 292 of the 381 metro areas in the U.S.
Interestingly, as the solid housing and auto recovery continued across the country in 2013, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing industries were the largest contributors to growth, contributing 0.36 percentage points to the U.S. metro area GDP growth, followed by nondurable-goods manufacturing (0.32) and professional and business services (0.24). The construction sector itself added only a very modest 0.06 percentage points to growth, which indicates the weak recovery in homebuilding compared to past economic recoveries.
Even so, the primary economic driver in the fastest growing metros last year was energy related industries. Larger metropolitan areas aren’t generally faring as well. Among the largest metropolitan areas, economy’s larger than $400 billion in regional economic output, only Houston and Dallas outperformed the nation’s average real GDP last year. New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago demonstrated only modest growth, falling behind the nation. Due to federal spending cuts in 2013, the Washington DC metro economy actually shrank by 0.8 percent.
The San Jose metro, which includes Silicon Valley, third largest economy in California ($192 billion in 2013), grew at an impressive 4.4 percent in 2013, with more than half of that growth coming from the information technology sector.
To find out more about where growth is occurring across our great country, check out this week’s US Outlook Report for September 19, 2014.
Tags: economy