Connecticut’s urban areas remain among of the most economically productive areas in the world, even while they struggle to recover from the great recession. In fact a new study from the Brookings Institution pegs Hartford as having the second highest economic output in the country, and the fourth highest in the world.
The Global Metro Monitor takes the economic temperature of 300 major cities around the world. Greater Hartford lies fourth in the world in terms of gross domestic product per capita, a measure of how much economic value is produced compared to the size of a metro area, including corporate profits as well as personal incomes. Only Zurich, Oslo and San Jose rank higher. Bridgeport, whose metro area include Fairfield County, lies eighth.
But another story is told by the most recent data on recovery from 2014.
“Three quarters of the fastest metro economies were in developing Asia Pacific, Central Asia and Eastern Europe,” said study author Joseph Parilla.
By contrast, Hartford ranks 239th, and Bridgeport 258th out of 300 in terms of the improvement in output over the last year, and neither is ranked by Brookings as even partially recovered from the recession, in terms of employment and economic growth.
"The continued shift in economic growth is a challenge in the sense that emerging market cities continue to grow wealthier, and that is a result of the fact that they're doing higher value economic activity that was previously located in places like North America," said Parilla. "The opportunity on the other hand is for exports and other global connections to these rapidly growing markets, that a place like Hartford, which has numerous global firms, can take advantage of."
Macau in China was the world’s fastest-growing metro area last year.