[Houston Strategies] Comparing Texas' Big 4 Metro Economies

[Tory Gattis]

David recently sent me this economic brief on Texas from Comerica Bank, choc full of interesting statistics comparing the big 4 metros of Texas:

• "Four of those top 40 MSAs are in Texas: Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), San Antonio and Austin. Respectively, the current dollar value of their GDPs ranked 4th, 6th, 36th and 37th in 2008. Together, they accounted for 77 percent of Texas GDP last year and seven percent of national GDP. The two giants, of course, are Houston and DFW, which each accounted for more than 30 percent of the state’s GDP. San Antonio and Austin each accounted for roughly 6 ½ percent of Texas GDP."

I've always kind of thought of Austin+San Antonio as sort of nearly equal to DFW or Houston, but that's clearly far from the case. Less than half.

• All of them have roughly the same long-term GDP growth (since 2001) as Texas as a whole (~3%, 50% higher than the U.S. as a whole at ~2%), except for Austin, which is 50% faster again (~4.5%). Austin got a bit of an artificial boost from the bounce-back effect after a hard dot.com crash in 2000.
• San Antonio is the most stable, followed by average DFW, with Austin and Houston having the most growth volatility (from tech and energy+hurricanes, respectively).
• "Perhaps the best single measure of economic success is per capita real GDP. DFW followed closely by Houston (~$50K) were particularly strong in 2008, ranking respectively 18th and 21st nationally. Austin (~$44K) also was relatively highly ranked coming in at 43rd among the 366 MSAs. San Antonio (~$32K) placed in the middle of the pack with a ranking of 180th."
• We all lag in per capita GDP growth, as population increases outstrip productivity increases. Houston lagged the worst, although I think this might be at least partly related to the large number of Katrina refugees (in addition to the usual international immigration). Texas also attracted a lot of lower-middle and middle income households this decade from across the country as housing got unaffordable elsewhere, averaging down GDP per capita. I wish they had stats to show GDP per capita growth for just the people that were here the entire period. I would imagine it would be much stronger: we have a pretty strong opportunity ladder that people move up the longer they're here, but new population is always streaming in at the bottom of the ladder.
  

Thanks for the tip, Dave.

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Posted By Tory Gattis to Houston Strategies at 12/07/2009 04:08:00 PM