One of the main principles of scenario planning is that you can’t plan well for the immediate future–you have to look out five, ten, even twenty years before you can get enough perspective on the possibilities before you to even begin to think about what you might do in the short term.  Well, some people around here have been doing just that.  And now, when they look back on the past five years, they are already beginning to see signs of dramatic change in the region.

 From Tom Waltermire, CEO of TeamNEO, comes the following:

What if I told you that…

Northeast Ohio’s economy has grown every year for the last 5 years?

What if I said that employment in

Northeast Ohio is at its highest level in 5 years?

What if I said that manufacturing output in our region is actually higher than 15 years ago?

Would you believe me?  Each of these statistics is TRUE, and yet, many Northeast Ohioans continue to think otherwise. Why is that? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but I would suggest two: First, no one, up to now, has regularly published data about our 16 county Cleveland Plus,

Northeast Ohio region. Without data for our region, how can we understand what is going on in the region? Team NEO is now filling that gap with a quarterly economic report focused on economic indicators only for the region as a whole. Each quarter we look at employment, total earnings by our workforce and estimates of our region’s total economic output, plus a special topic of interest. Viewed as 16 counties, we are doing better in most measures than popular perception. You can access our most recent report by clicking here. In this report you will find the facts behind the questions above and much more, including:

• Unemployment has averaged 5.4% the past year, relatively low by historical standards.
• The total payroll for the region’s workforce is $7 billion per year higher than 5 years ago, after subtracting inflation. The average worker is better paid in real terms than 5 years ago.
• Manufacturing still leads Northeast Ohio’s economy, with 22% of our economic output, and that output is indeed higher than 15 years ago.
• Output per manufacturing worker has jumped 35% in just the last 6 years. We are more productive and competitive.
• Our total economy is 32% larger than 15 years ago. Yes, 32% LARGER.

There are many remarkable insights in this quarter’s report. Yes, compared to the

US as a whole, our growth has been slower. But we all know the hits we have taken to some of our long-standing economic pillars. And yet, we have grown by nearly a third since the early 1990s. Underlying economic vitality and innovation are more than offsetting those big hits. None of us should be satisfied with where we are, but we all should have the confidence that we are in fact building on the foundation of the past to create a better future. There are a lot of talented people here doing amazing things.So why is this not perceived and widely reported? It is human nature and unavoidable journalistic practice to focus on the big changes that hit us. Economic downturns often are noisy. Growth hums. Between the tortoise and the hare, when the hare crashes and burns, he gets the headlines, while the steady progress of the tortoise doesn’t make the cut for your favorite media homepage.

We also find it hard to describe our complex, heterogeneous region in media-friendly sound bites. Jobs are up in some parts of the region and down in others. We have core cities with low personal incomes and other communities where incomes are strong. The City of

Cleveland loses population, but more people live downtown than ever before and the condos keep coming.

Akron progresses while the other core cities lag.It is right for the headlines to be about our challenges. They urge us to action. But, unfortunately, those negative headlines about one slice of our region tend to morph into an image of the region as a whole. Federal statistics do show that per capita income for the 400,000 residents of the City of

Cleveland is low compared to other large cities. But, those same statistics show that income for the 2,100,000 residents of the 5 county metro-Cleveland ranks in the top 25% of all metropolitan areas, higher than metro-Atlanta and

Charlotte. Both views are true.We are still learning how to think and talk about ourselves as a region. This requires both a regional view and views that address the realities of our many, disparate parts. As a whole, we are better than we think. That knowledge and confidence that we are making progress, in the face of strong headwinds, is vital, if we are to pick up the pace for the benefit of the region as a whole and for the benefit of each community.

Tom Waltermire

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 5:44 am and is filed under Policy, Strategy, Manufacturing, Innovation, Entrepreneurship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.