CT Metro Areas: Lagging the Nation and the World in Growth

How’s Connecticut faring in the world? For income, just fine, thank you.

Growth is a different story. The Brookings Institution issued a report Friday ranking the world’s largest 300 metro areas in growth in 2012, based on output per-person and jobs. Even among lagging U.S. metros, Bridgeport-Stamford and Hartford ranked low, Nos. 255 and 226 respectively.

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New Haven was the rabbit at No. 195, still well below New York (155) and Boston (117).  At least we were ahead of Providence in perennially ailing Rhode Island, which clocked in at No. 267.

To no one’s surprise, “The analysis found that the fastest-growing metropolitan economies were in developing Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa, while the slowest-growing metropolitan economies were in Western Europe and North America,” Brookings said.

First overall was Macau, with more than 5 percent growth in both output per person and jobs. Athens, Greece was last by a longshot.  The top U.S. metro for 2012 growth was Houston, at No. 40.

Looking back a few years, Connecticut metro areas have long been laggards. From 2007 to 2011, Bridgeport-Stanford was No. 260; Hartford was No. 219; and New Haven was 262. For 1993 to 2007, the three Connecticut metros ranged from No. 224 to No. 254.

For all those years of poor growth, we have maintained a strong lead in per-capita income and, more important, we remain high on the list of median family income, though that figure is slipping.

Brookings make the point that the global economy is a big-metro economy. The combined 300 metros represent almost half the world’s output but only 19 percent of global population.