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Overview

The Tampa Bay E-Insights report examines the economic performance of the Tampa Bay region relative to 19 other comparable Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Since 2017, ±«Óãtv researchers have released five E-Insights reports. The first was a study of economic competitiveness of the Tampa Bay region. Later inquiries expanded the analysis to include inclusive economic growth, the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and racial equity. Researchers evaluated the impact of the pandemic on each of these areas — innovation and entrepreneurship, education, and health care. Last year’s E-Insights report examined the state of work and state of life in the Tampa Bay region relative to 19 comparable MSAs.

This year, the E-Insights report focuses on the performance of the Tampa Bay region in three key areas: economic outcomes, affordability and talent pipeline. The report presents a benchmarking analysis of these topics from different dimensions such as housing affordability, education affordability, affordable health care, talent availability, job opportunities, and entrepreneurship activities, to present insights on the performance of Tampa Bay with respect to 19 other MSAs. It also presents an analysis comparing Tampa Bay with the MSAs in the comparison group on indicators related to the quality of life, such as personal income per capita, household debt-to income ratio, Black-white unemployment rate gap, and others.

This report data primarily comes from traditional sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the National Center for Education Statistics. Additionally, the report also uses data from real-time sources such as Google Trends, Indeed, Numbeo and Zillow to analyze recent trends.

These sources provide data at the MSA level. For the 19 MSAs, researchers pulled data directly from the sources. However, for the Raleigh-Durham MSA, which consists of two MSAs (Raleigh MSA and Durham-Chapel Hill MSA) and the Tampa Bay region, which consists of four MSAs (Tampa-St Petersburg-Clearwater MSA, Northport-Sarasota-Bradenton MSA, Homosassa Springs MSA, and Lakeland-Winter Haven MSA), scholars aggregated the data from the MSA level to the regional level by taking weighted averages using population as the weight. For each economic indicator, the definition and the data sources are described at the bottom of the page of that indicator.