Region's Economy to Grow 14% by 2025 – Team NEO

Monday, January 26, 2015

CLEVELAND --- The northeastern Ohio region’s gross regional product grew 45% from 1990 to 2015, although employment gained only 3% over the period, Team NEO reports.

The quarterly Cleveland Plus Economic Review, released Sunday, projects that northeastern Ohio’s gross regional product will grow another 14% to reach a $247 billion economy and employment will fall to by 5% by 2025.

“Northeast Ohio’s economy has grown and diversified since 1990,” said David T. Abbott, executive director of The George Gund Foundation and Team NEO co-chairman. “While the pace of growth has been slower than desired, our expansion into other industries has made us more resilient to contractions in manufacturing and provided us with opportunities for faster, long-term growth.” 

Manufacturing remains the largest sector of northeastern Ohio’s economy, the report shows, accounting for 19%. Despite declines in employment, manufacturing has grown 13% since 1990 and is expected to grow 34% over the next decade to become a $56 billion sector, or 23% of the economy.

At the same time, manufacturing employment has declined 40% over the past 25 years. Its losses have been offset by growth in health care (+64%), professional, scientific and technical services (+21%), and headquarters (+100%) employment.

“The strength of Northeast Ohio’s health-care sector provides a solid foundation for growth into related areas such as biomedical -- one of the high-potential sectors identified by the Regional Economic Competitiveness Strategy for increased focus and investment,” said Grant Goodrich, interim CEO of Team NEO.

In addition, all of the economic indicators tracked in the report are trending up year-over-year:

• Total Employment -- Up 13,000 jobs from the second quarter of  2013 to the second quarter of 2014, total employment is at 1.9 million.
• Unemployment – The northeastern Ohio unemployment rate is 6.1% for the second quarter of 2014, down from 7.4% for the same time period in 2013.
• Year-Over-Year Growth in Sectors -- The services sector gained 7,100 jobs from the second quarter of 2013 to the same period last year, while construction added more than 3,100 workers and manufacturing grew more than 1,000 jobs for the same time period
• Well Activity -- The number of producing wells grew to 713 in production in the state, up 141, or almost 25% from the third quarter of 2014 to the same period in 2013. Further, wells in production are up 401, or 128% year-over-year.

Team NEO publishes the Cleveland Plus Economic Review quarterly to provide a holistic picture of the regional economy. It uses Moody’s Economy.com and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and Ohio’s Labor Market Information to aggregate regional figures.

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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