A good editor always keeps an eye out for the "buried lead" — a crucial fact that should lead the reader into a story but somehow ends up dumped into the 14th paragraph.
Our whole region buried the lead a few weeks ago — when the Brookings Institution reported the Richmond area's economic recovery last year ranked 191st among the world's 200 largest metropolitan areas. So, yeah, we had a rough year in 2011.
The real news for me — a longtime Richmonder — was that we made the list and live in one of the 200 biggest economies on Earth.
A little digging revealed that in 2010, Richmond's was the 45th largest metropolitan economy in the United States. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, our regional gross domestic product stands at about $64 billion. That's bigger than Costa Rica and Jordan — combined!
In December, our regional unemployment rate was 1.5 percentage points below the national rate, and we ranked 106th among 372 American metro areas. Our per capita GDP is nearly identical to the U.S. average. So despite last year's pause, we remain a prosperous region.
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Still, it came as no surprise that the No. 191 ranking for Richmond triggered snickers and name-calling from the usual suspects, who seem to enjoy sneering at any effort to promote the hometown or test new approaches.
But even this report was better than a first glance suggests.
For starters, from 2007 to 2010, Richmond's economy, as measured by employment and income growth, ranked 84th in the world, according to the Brookings study. In other words, better than most.
Last year's weak performance should not be ignored. But the causes are fairly clear and not terribly surprising.
Other 2011 laggards included Sacramento, Atlanta and Indianapolis. Ace geography students have already deduced that these cities, like Richmond, are capitals of relatively large American states, where tight budgets have slowed the growth of government and the companies that serve it. (In the long run, a slightly more modest and less wasteful government will serve as a catalyst to stronger private-sector growth.)
Richmond was further damaged by its standing as a major regional financial center, one of the hardest-hit industries in the Great Recession, and by the pure bad luck of having a couple of its biggest businesses literally disappear thanks to miscalculations and mistakes.
The anemic American economy was the biggest reason Richmond landed near the bottom of the list for 2011. According to the Brookings report, "Ninety percent of the strongest-performing metropolitan economies among the 200 largest worldwide were located outside North America and Western Europe."
The list of fastest-growing regions was dominated by Asian, Middle Eastern and, to a lesser extent, Latin American metropolises. Just two American cities – No. 19 Houston and No. 36 Dallas — made the top 40. Both are, of course, located in Texas — famous for oil production, low taxes, tort reform and weak labor unions. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
No one believes Metro Richmond is perfect, and the recent economic slowdown serves as a warning. We live and work in a deeply competitive world. We need to understand our advantages and enhance them, to identify our weaknesses and attack them.
Easier said than done, but deftly deploying our creative capital will pay widespread long-term dividends.
The Brookings report confirms that the Richmond economy plays on the big stage. It's time to get our act together.
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