{"id":5200,"date":"2012-03-14T12:52:12","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T17:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=5200"},"modified":"2012-03-14T12:52:41","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T17:52:41","slug":"government-growth-has-been-good-to-lawton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/03\/14\/government-growth-has-been-good-to-lawton\/","title":{"rendered":"Government Growth has Been Good to Lawton"},"content":{"rendered":"
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duchesskit08 \/ Flickr<\/p>\n

Basic training family day and graduation at Fort Sill.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Three metropolitan areas dominate Oklahoma\u2019s economy.<\/p>

The Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Lawton metro areas contributed about 75 percent of the state\u2019s 2010 gross domestic product, a term that describes the total market value of goods and services that are produced, U.S. Department of Commerce data show.<\/p>

But Lawton’s GDP has grown significantly more than both OKC and Tulsa in recent years. Why is that?<\/p>

<\/p>\n

The Lawton metro has a fraction of OKC and Tulsa\u2019s respective populations, but its gross domestic product is increasing \u2014 a lot.<\/p>\n

Real GDP Growth from 2009-2010<\/h4>\n
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Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

From 2009 to 2010, Lawton\u2019s GDP grew 6.9 percent. Compare that to OKC\u2019s 1.7 percent growth and Tulsa, which has been on the decline since 2008.<\/p>

That\u2019s big for Oklahoma, but it\u2019s nationally significant, too. The Lawton metro ranked No. 15 in growth among all 366 U.S. metropolitan areas, according to the Department of Commerce\u2019s Bureau of Economic Analysis. OKC ranked 205; Tulsa 329.<\/p>

The OKC and Tulsa metros grew faster than Lawton\u2019s in 2007 and 2008. But something changed from 2009 to 2010. One possibility? The government.<\/p>

As an industry sector, government is growing big-time in the Lawton metro. From 2009-2010, government grew 5.6 percent, according to the data<\/a>, which we confirmed with the bureau’s Ralph Stewart. OKC\u2019s barely grew at all during those years, and Tulsa\u2019s actually declined slightly.<\/p>

The government\u2019s role in Lawton is obvious: Fort Sill, which is the area\u2019s largest single employer.<\/p>

We’re going to dig into this some more in the coming weeks. One thing we’re interested in: Why the OKC metro is being outpaced when it has Tinker Air Force Base, the state’s largest<\/a> single-site employer?<\/p>

Have any idea what’s going on down in Lawton? jwertz@stateimpact.org \/ @StateImpactOK on Twitter<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three metropolitan areas dominate Oklahoma\u2019s economy.The Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Lawton metro areas contributed about 75 percent of the state\u2019s 2010 gross domestic product, a term that describes the total market value of goods and services that are produced, U.S. Department of Commerce data show.But Lawton’s GDP has grown significantly more than both OKC and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":5201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[301,15],"tags":[193,330,331],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5209,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200\/revisions\/5209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}