Where does Wichita’s economic recovery rank?

While contentious debate continues at the national level over how real the recovery is from the 2008 recession, we here in Wichita naturally care most about how the recovery is proceeding in our own city.

Fortunately, a report from the Metropolitan Studies division of the Brookings Institution released on March 7 gives us some answers, and they are not as hopeful as many of us would like.

The Brookings report compares Wichita to the performance of the top 100 U.S cities’ long three dimensions, using trends from 2010 to 2015.

First, Wichita ranks 88th out of the top 100 nationally in the “growth” of our economy, reflecting a composite average of job growth, regional output growth and the growth of jobs at new firms (which actually was negative).

This relatively poor growth performance no doubt reflects Wichita’s relatively high reliance on manufacturing jobs, which have been declining as a share of total jobs in the economy for decades. That is due overwhelmingly to continued automation and not to international trade or global factors.

Nor does the data on young firms reflect any pickup in entrepreneurial activity over the past 18 months, which anecdotal evidence – such as strong attendance at events like 1 Million Cups and Startup Grind – suggests is positive.

Second, Wichita doesn’t do much better on Brookings’ prosperity index – 69th out of the top 100 – which takes into account the growth of productivity (negative), standard of living and growth in wages (the latter two moderately positive).

Wichita is hurt in the national rankings by the presence of tech-heavy cities where wages are growing much more rapidly.

Third, Wichita does relatively better on Brookings’ measure of “inclusion” – how widely our gains in employment and income are shared among our population. Here our score is 44 out of the top 100.

Most optimistically, the 12 percent decline in poverty in our city during the 2010-15 period puts us third in the nation, or better than 97 of the other 100 metro areas.

The bottom line: Wichita’s growth has been relatively poor, but at least we do a pretty good job of sharing what prosperity we have managed to generate.

Many of you will be upset with these figures, but they are in line with the complementary data reported by James Chung, so they should come as no surprise. They also do not reflect any progress the city has made – which I believe is very real – since 2015, the last year for which Brookings had data in its analysis.

The Eagle continues to highlight the many activities mounted over just the past two years that are collectively providing uplift to the economic fortunes of our city. Those activities will not only have to be maintained but also strengthened.

Readers of my previous columns know that I believe two keys to sustained resurgence are both educational.

Our K-12 schools must improve, which requires more than any additional money that might come to us by virtue of the Kansas Supreme Court’s recent decision over education funding. It will take a commitment to innovation, the same kind of commitment being demonstrated by our flagship university, Wichita State.

The future of our city depends on our ability to turn out and retain college graduates who will form and work for the companies necessary for us to thrive in the 21st century.

This story was originally published March 21, 2017 at 3:40 PM with the headline "Where does Wichita’s economic recovery rank?."