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 Economy
May 17, 1998 By Douglas Heuck, Post-Gazette Benchmarks Editor
There are different ways of gauging this region's economic performance. Compared with most cities around the globe, Pittsburgh's economy would be an object of absolute envy — no unrest due to famine, revolution or war, unemployment so low that it's virtually full employment, and certainly no overcrowding. But for better or worse, this project compares the Pittsburgh area with 14 similar-sized regions in America. And though these are high economic times across the country, when you compare Pittsburgh's economy with the others, Pittsburgh comes up wanting. In five of the 17 categories, Pittsburgh is last. They are job growth, quality job growth, real estate construction, population growth and labor force participation. In seven other categories, the metro economy — including Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties — ranks in the bottom third of the 15 regions. They are high-tech gazelles, gross metro product, exports, initial public offerings, new and expanded facilities, migration and increase in annual average pay. In fact there is only one of the 17 benchmark measures — productivity — in which metro Pittsburgh ranks above the middle of the pack. The numbers don't inspire enthusiasm for the status quo. The statistics, however, reflect what has gone before — where Pittsburgh has been in the range of years between 1991 and 1997. They do not foretell the future.
Listed below is a series of charts displaying data on various economic measurements: As with previous benchmarks, this section ranks the benchmark cities in order from 1 to 15 in various categories. Our interactive benchmark charts enable you to see the rankings of a particular category for all of our benchmarks cities or compare two cities to each other.
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