Economic Development

Greater Philadelphia is a large complex region, covering portions of two states, with hundreds of municipalities responsible for individual development and land use decisions. The region’s economy is similarly diverse with dozens of public– and private– sector organizations seeking to promote or attract a wide variety of sectors and specific interests. DVRPC’s process and strategy strives to address all the opportunities and challenges that the region faces.

While each county and municipality approaches economic development differently, we are all united in advancing common goals: investing in their people, creating attractive places, and supporting businesses. Continued coordination across states lines, city and county boundaries, employment sectors, and public and private sectors is essential to maintain a regional perspective and shared vision, goals and objectives.

The strategy has three big goals: open economic opportunities to everyone; compete globally; and sustain a high quality of life. Each goal is supported by specific strategies and initiatives to sustain and grow jobs throughout the region, at the regional and local level.

The strategy emphasizes traditional economic development priorities such as transportation, education, international trade and the region’s business climate. Newer emphasis areas include a local revitalization strategies, workforce development and advancing social equity and diversity.

DVRPC manages the regional Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) for the Greater Philadelphia region, satisfying provisions of the United States Economic Development Administration (EDA). The Greater Philadelphia Economic Development Framework was formally approved by the EDA as the regional CEDS on September 30, 2009.

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DVRPC Region Economic Update

Over-the-year employment increased by 88,800 jobs (3.2 percent) in the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington (Philadelphia) Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and 10,300 jobs (3.8 percent) in the Trenton-Mercer County Area. Comparatively, national over-the-year employment increased by 3.9 percent. The largest employment percentage increase was in the Leisure and Hospitality industry for both areas: in the Philadelphia MSA, the industry added 23,100 jobs (+11.5 percent) and in Trenton, the industry added 1,500 jobs (+15.2 percent).

The unemployment rate declined once again in both areas, going from 5.7 percent in September to 5.1 percent in the Philadelphia MSA and 5.1 percent in September to 4.4 percent in Trenton. This matches the trend nationally as the unemployment rate went from 4.6 percent in September to 4.3 percent in October.

The inflation rate in the Philadelphia MSA is up 5.6 percent from last year, compared to 6.2 percent nationally. In October, the DVRPC region authorized 1,097 new housing units, resulting in 15,927 authorized new housing units in the region since January.

Disclaimer: charts and figures updated daily

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Note: a huge influx of permits in Philadelphia prior to the 10-year Tax Abatement changing led to an outlier in new housing units authorized for December 2021

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Notes

Geographies

Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA): An MSA is an area with at least one urban core and 50,000 total inhabitants. Each MSA is made up of one or more counties. The Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington MSA (Philadelphia MSA) is comprised of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania; Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, and Salem County in New Jersey; New Castle County in Delaware; and Cecil County in Maryland. The Trenton-Princeton MSA is comprised of Mercer County in New Jersey.

Use of MSA instead of counties in region: depending on the data source and its variables, some data is not available at the county level. When this is the case, we use the MSA-level data as a proxy for the DVRPC region. Additionally, since the Trenton-Princeton MSA is relatively small, there are times where data is not available for this geography, and in those cases we only show the Philadelphia MSA data.

Terms

Over-the-year: change from one year to the other. For example, the change in industry employment from October 2020 to October 2021.

New Housing Units Authorized: these are development projects that have received permits but have not yet been built.