A week ago Monday, The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) concluded its 83rd Annual Meeting in San Francisco. By all accounts, it was a successful meeting that garnered considerable attention in the national media as the nation’s mayors pushed forward their agenda to make America’s cities better places to live and economically competitive with their global peers in partnership with the federal government. Among the guest speakers were former senator and Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; Nancy Pelosi, majority leader in the U.S. House, whose district covers the meeting’s host city; U.S. president Barack Obama; and, perhaps most importantly, musicians Carlos Santana and M.C. Hammer. (No, USCM and the nation’s mayors don’t fool around.)
And I was able to contribute in my own small way to that success. Continuing a relationship that has existed several years, I produced electronic and print materials highlighting the work of the Council on Metro Economies and the New American City and USCM’s national financial education campaign, DollarWise.
Specifically, I updated the charts that accompanied the latest Metro Economies Report (PDF), released on Friday, 19 June. This is the latest in the flagship Metro Economies series that highlights the contributions of metropolitan areas to the nation’s economy. As these charts highlight, nearly 91% of the nation’s GDP is produced in metro areas; of the new jobs and growth in GDP produced last year, fully 94% and 95%, respectively, was generated in metros.
The full charts, which include the innovative dashboard I introduced last year, as well as comparisons of metro economies with national and state economies and a list of the top 100 metro economies, are below.
For DollarWise my work included a PowerPoint presentation to accompany an update on the campaign presented by Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacrament and outgoing president of USCM, and the latest edition of Innovations in Financial Education (formerly called Partnerships).
Here’s a video version of the PowerPoint presentation, complete with animations.
And here is the latest Innovations in Financial Education.
Dustin Tyler Joyce 