Voice For Liberty

Tag: Visioneering

Wichita job growth under the Visioneering/Brewer regime
Wichita has set ambitious goals in job growth, but it doesn’t seem that the Visioneering program has produced results. But apparently Wichita government officials are satisfied.
One of the benchmarks of Visioneering is “Exceed the highest of the annual percentage job growth rate of the U.S., Omaha, Tulsa, Kansas City and Oklahoma City.”
In May, Suzie Ahlstrand of the Wichita Chamber of Commerce presented Wichita City Council members with the benchmark documents, but didn’t elaborate on these in her presentation.
I can understand her reluctance to focus on these numbers. They’re not good. Tremendous opportunities have been lost and wasted, and people have suffered. Yet, city leaders seem satisfied. Thrilled, even.
An interactive visualization holding job numbers for Wichita and our Visioneering peers is available at Wichita job growth and Visioneering peers. Or, watch the video below (or click here to watch at YouTube, which may work better for some people).
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August 8, 2013
Wichita airport statistics: the visualization
In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.
— Frederic Bastiat
While the program to reduce airfares in Wichita has probably met that goal, there have been consequences.
In particular, the availability of air travel in Wichita is lower than it has been, and the trend is in the wrong direction. In some aspects the Wichita trend mirrors that of the nation and other airports, and in others Wichita is falling farther behind.
The illustration nearby (click it for a larger version) is a static snapshot of data for the nation as a whole (blue line), Wichita (brown), and a few other airports in cities that Wichita’s Visioneering effort identifies as our peers. For each series, I show the percentage change over time, so that all series operate on the same scale. Data is through the end of 2012.
Of particular concern should be the trend in departures and seats. Both are declining in Wichita, as they are also for the nation. But the gap between Wichita and the nation is widening in recent years.
This trend is an example of unintended consequences of government intervention and regulation. The Affordable Airfares program imposes a rough form of price control on airfares in Wichita. If the program didn’t do that — and it appears it succeeds at this goal — then there would be no point in having the program.
The inevitable effect of price controls is that less is supplied, compared to what would have been supplied. This economic phenomenon is reliable and predictable. While travelers prefer low air fares to high, this is not the only consideration. For those who need to travel on short notice, the availability of flights is very important, and on this measure, Wichita is doing much worse than the nation.
For more about the subsidy programs in use at the Wichita airport, see these articles:
Wichita flight count continues decline. “A program designed to bring low air fares to Wichita appears to meet that goal, but the unintended and inevitable consequences of the program are not being recognized. In particular, the number of flights available at the Wichita airport continues to decline.”
Affordable Airfares audit embarrassing to Wichita. “An audit of Affordable Airfares produced by the Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit is an embarrassment to City of Wichita elected officials and staff, the Kansas Regional Area Economic Partnership, and the Wichita State University Center for Economic Development and Business Research.”
Mixed message on Southwest subsidies. “Now that Southwest Airlines has announced that it will offer service in Wichita, the question is this: Will Southwest tap the subsidy?”
To help you explore this data, I’ve created an interactive visualization. Click here to open the visualization in a new window. You may add or remove any number of airports. Or, if you’d like to watch a video, click on Wichita Airport statistics: The video.
Data is from Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Visualization created by myself using Tableau Public.
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July 29, 2013
Visioneering asks for money. Let’s ask these questions.
When Visioneering Wichita asks the Sedgwick County Commission for funds this week, commissioners may want to ask a few questions about how well the Wichita-area economy has performed, compared to the peers that Visioneering has selected.
Here’s some data that merits consideration and begs a few questions: Compensation paid. In the nearby chart (click on it for a larger version) I present this data divided into four data series: Wichita vs. its peers as selected by Visioneering, and private sector vs. government. (Data is from U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Visualization created by myself using Tableau Public.)
What conclusions should we draw from this data? First, compensation paid to government employees (left chart) has risen faster than that paid to private sector employees. Much faster.
Second, when looking at government employment compensation, Wichita tracks almost exactly the same path as the average of our Visioneering peers.
Third, and this is what is most important: Wichita lags far behind our Visioneering peers in private sector compensation.
There’s other data that tells a similar story. In the article Wichita job growth and Visioneering peers, we can see that Wichita has set ambitious goals in job growth, but it doesn’t seem that the Visioneering program has produced results. But apparently Wichita government officials are satisfied. (For coverage of council members’ reactions, see Wichita city council reacts to Visioneering presentation.)
In Wichita and peer GDP growth: we find that compared to its peers, the government sector in Wichita is growing fairly quickly, but the private sector is growing slowly.
In Wichita personal income growth benchmark we see more of the same. Private sector growth in Wichita is slow, compared to our peers.
When Visioneering asks the Sedgwick County Commission for funds, commissioners might want to take a moment and inquire about these issues:
Is Visioneering satisfied with the performance of Wichita, as measured by these benchmarks?
Is Wichita’s trend in these benchmarks moving in the right direction, or is Wichita falling farther behind?
Are these the correct benchmarks we should be using?
Is it possible that Visioneering is making the Wichita economy better than it would be without Visioneering? Or is it making it worse, or is there no difference?
Does Visioneering need additional resources to fulfill its mission?
On the Visioneering website, why are no future events listed? Are none planned?
On the Visioneering website, under the “News” section, is it true that there has been no news to post since August 2011 or September 2012 (there are two streams of news)?
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June 16, 2013
Wichita and peer GDP growth
Compared to its peers, the government sector in Wichita is growing fairly quickly, but the private sector is growing slowly.
One of the benchmarks used by Visioneering Wichita to gauge the growth of the Wichita-area economy may not be the best measure, and its interpretation requires caution.
The measure is per-capita personal income. Its presentation may be seen here. Some of the issues with per capita measures are explained by Dave Trabert of Kansas Policy Institute:
Per-capita income is a bad measurement because it rewards cities that are losing people due to domestic migration and punishes those who are gaining.
Even without the per-capita issue, personal income is not a clean measure. Personal income can increase because federal transfer payments grew, employers had to spend more to provide health care benefits, and other items that have nothing to do with measuring relative economic growth.
Better measurements would be private sector jobs, private sector GDP and private sector wage and salary disbursements. Unless the point of Visioneering is to grow government, the measurements should only be of private sector elements.
Last year KPI explained how the mathematics of per-capita measures can produce results that seem paradoxical. The current edition of Rich States, Poor States has a section devoted to these problems. Here’s an explanation of a scenario that requires caution to interpret:
Further, the residents of a state can be better off even if that state’s per-capita or median income decreases. If, for example, 50,000 low income agriculture workers move into Texas, those workers’ incomes almost surely rise (or else they would not have moved there). The residents and business owners in Texas who benefit from their labor services are better off, and the final result is that no one is worse off. But the per-capita income in Texas may actually go down if the low income agricultural workers earn less than the state’s average wage.
To help better understand economic growth in Wichita and its peers, I’ve gathered gross domestic product (GDP) figures for the Wichita metropolitan area and the peer metropolitan areas Visioneering has selected. GDP is value of all the finished products and services produced, and is the most comprehensive measure of economic activity. I’ve also looked at private sector GDP and government GDP.
To the left, we see growth in GDP for the government sector. (Click for a larger version.) This data is indexed, so that each area starts at the same relative level and we can compare the relative growth over a period of years. Wichita, the brown line, is not far from the top, meaning that value produced in government jobs has grown faster than in most of our peers.
Next, is a chart of growth in GDP for the private sector. (Click for a larger version.) It is here that we see how poorly the Wichita-area economy has performed. The private sector is growing very slowly in Wichita, compared to our peers.
When we couple slow growth of the private sector with faster growth of government, we’re setting the stage for even slower growth of the type of jobs that produce prosperity. Those are, of course, private sector jobs.
When we compare the per-capita figures with the absolute figures, we see that while Wichita performs poorly on a per-capita basis, it performs even worse on an absolute basis.
Explore the data yourself by using the visualization below, or click here to open it in a new window, which may work better for some people. Use Ctrl+Click to highlight metropolitan areas for comparison. Data is from U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Visualization created by myself using Tableau Public.
Learn About Tableau
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June 6, 2013
Wichita personal income growth benchmark
When Visioneering Wichita recently presented its annual report to the Wichita City Council, Wichita City Council members received benchmark documents. Whether the mayor and council members actually looked at and considered these measurements is unknown.
We do know that Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, as memorialized in the official meeting minutes, praised Visioneering: “Mayor Brewer stated this is one of the smartest moves that the City of Wichita has done because it was the primary catalyst that pulled the public and the private together and laid out a vision for our City.”
Other council members also expressed enthusiastic approval for Visioneering.
As shown in Wichita job growth and Visioneering peers, the benchmark data for Wichita as compared to its peer cities shows poor relative performance of the Wichita economy. That article looked at job growth, which is one of the areas Visioneering is benchmarking.
Another area Visioneering benchmarks is per capita income. The chart provided by Visioneering is difficult to read and recognize emerging trends. I’ve prepared an interactive visualization of Wichita and the peer areas that Visioneering uses.
To the left is a chart of Wichita and peer personal income per capita, from 1969 to 1989. (Click for a larger version.) During this time period, Wichita compares well to the peer metropolitan areas that Visioneering uses.
To the left is a chart of of the same data, but from 1990 to 2011. (Click for a larger version.) It’s during this stretch that Wichita starts to fall behind its peers in per capita income, until finally Wichita ranks last in this measure, as it also does in job growth.
Soon Visioneering will make a presentation to members of the Sedgwick County Commission. Perhaps commissioners will ask a few questions about these benchmarks. If I were a commissioner, I might ask these questions:
Is Visioneering satisfied with the performance of Wichita, as measured by these benchmarks?
Is Wichita’s trend in these benchmarks moving in the right direction, or is Wichita falling farther behind?
Are these the correct benchmarks we should be using?
Is it possible that Visioneering is in fact making the Wichita economy better than it would be without Visioneering?
Does Visioneering need additional resources to fulfill its mission?
On the Visioneering website, why are no future events listed? Are none planned?
On the Visioneering website, under the “News” section, is it true that there has been no news to post since August 2011 or September 2012 (there are two streams of news)?
Citizens might also wonder why no members of the Wichita City Council asked any questions like these.
Explore the data yourself by using the visualization below, or click here to open it in a new window, which may work better for some people. Use Ctrl+Click to highlight metropolitan areas for comparison. Data is from U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Visualization created by myself using Tableau Public.
Learn About Tableau
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June 5, 2013
Wichita job growth and Visioneering peers
Wichita has set ambitious goals in job growth, but it doesn’t seem that the Visioneering program has produced results. But apparently Wichita government officials are satisfied.
In 2004 Wichita leaders created Visioneering Wichita. The self-described goals of Visioneering are “To provide citizen input in developing our future, to facilitate communications so reality and perceptions are aligned, and to create a strategic plan that ensures a quality of life and encourages our young people to live, learn, work and play in our regional community.”
One of the benchmarks of Visioneering is “Exceed the highest of the annual percentage job growth rate of the U.S., Omaha, Tulsa, Kansas City and Oklahoma City.”
In May, Suzie Ahlstrand of the Wichita Chamber of Commerce presented Wichita City Council members with the benchmark documents, but didn’t elaborate on these in her presentation.
I can understand her reluctance to focus on these numbers. They’re not good.
We don’t know what the Wichita economy would look like in the absence of Visioneering. There’s no way to rewind and watch what would have happened had Visioneering not been created.
What we do know, however, is that the Wichita-area economy is not performing well. Consider job growth, since that is the first of Visioneering’s benchmarks. The chart Visioneering presented to council members is available here. It’s a difficult chart to read, and doesn’t lend to ready comparison of how Wichita is doing compared to our peers.
Following are charts I created from similar data. These charts are different from Visioneering’s in that they show the cumulative change in job growth from a starting point. My data goes back to 2001, and since the visualization is interactive, you may adjust the range of years.
Here is a static chart of job growth, considering all jobs. (Click for a larger version.)
Here is a static chart of job growth, this time considering only government jobs. (Click for a larger version.)
Can we be satisfied with this performance? Considering all jobs types, Wichita is in last place. There are those who might take comfort that when including government jobs, Wichita does better. But as growth in the government sector outpaces growth in the private sector, Wichita becomes less prosperous than if we were creating private sector jobs.
In the light of this, consider the reaction of Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, as presented in the official minutes: “Mayor Brewer stated this is one of the smartest moves that the City of Wichita has done because it was the primary catalyst that pulled the public and the private together and laid out a vision for our City.”
Other council members also expressed enthusiastic approval for Visioneering. (For coverage of all council members’ reactions, see Wichita city council reacts to Visioneering presentation.)
We need to ask, however, these questions: First, were the mayor and council members aware of these job creation numbers? Second, if they were aware, are they satisfied with this performance?
Explore the data yourself by using the visualization below, or click here to open it in a new window, which may work better for some people. Use Ctrl+Click to highlight metropolitan areas for comparison. Data is from Bureau of Economic Analysis by way of U.S. Department of Labor. Visualization created by myself using Tableau Public.
Learn About Tableau
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May 31, 2013