Chamber of Commerce members must focus on boosting KC area’s weak economy

At a breakfast today, Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce members will hear local experts discuss the future of the metropolitan area economy.

Spoiler alert: It’s in trouble.

This region has had slower rates of growth in jobs and wages than many other metropolitan areas over too much of the past decade. And keep in mind that we’re talking about the entire region, including the supposedly go-go destination of Johnson County.

The chamber’s members need to step up and help lead this community by creating more jobs. They need to have more of a shared agenda in envisioning regional strategies, as a recent report noted. Corporate leaders especially need to promote investments in their companies and in public amenities in Kansas City and its suburbs, all to attract the next generation of young workers who want to live in a vibrant region.

Several signs indicate the depth of this region’s problems.

▪ Federal Bureau of Economic Analysis figures reveal that the metropolitan area’s ranking in personal income fell markedly from 2002 to 2012.

In 2002, Kansas City boasted the 48th highest annual personal income of 381 metropolitan areas in America. Our region’s income was $459 a year higher than the U.S. metropolitan average.

By 2012, the area’s annual personal income had dropped to 65th highest in the nation — and it was a disappointing $422 a year lower than the U.S. average.

▪ A report called “Prosperity at the Crossroads,” released earlier this year by the Mid-America Regional Council and Brookings, painted a dismal picture.

Notably, the area’s jobs and wages had grown at half the pace of the national average in the decade or so ending in 2011. That reversed positive trends of the 1990s, when jobs and wages grew faster than the U.S. average.

▪ In more recent years, the Kansas City area has badly lagged many of its peers in job creation.

The Star recently researched and confirmed this after several civic leaders attacked the MARC/Brookings report as being too downbeat.

Numbers from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the metropolitan area placed an abysmal 21st out of 25 regions in job growth rates from June 2011 to June of this year. The 25 included many Midwestern cities that the Kansas City area competes against for jobs and residents.

Dramatically improving that ranking must be a high priority.

This story was originally published September 22, 2014 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Chamber of Commerce members must focus on boosting KC area’s weak economy."