Economic Profile

The Tulsa MSA comprises seven counties: Creek, Okmulgee, Osage, Pawnee, Rogers, Tulsa and Wagoner, whose aggregate population is estimated to be 946,223 or 25.0 percent of the population of the state of Oklahoma. The gross product or value of all goods and services produced in the seven-county MSA is estimated to be $41.9 billion (constant dollars in 2011) 30.9 percent of the Oklahoma economy.

Tulsa’s major industries are aerospace, including aerospace manufacturing and aviation; health care; energy; machinery and electrical equipment manufacturing and transportation; distribution and logistics. Several clusters, or groups of companies within industries that buy or sell to each other in the manufacture of goods for export from the area, have disproportionately large concentrations of employment relative to the U.S. concentrations and are positioned to grow within the Tulsa MSA: Aerospace parts manufacturing is 129 percent more concentrated in the Tulsa MSA than in the U.S.; oil and gas production and machinery manufacturing, eight times more concentrated; and pump and compressor manufacturing, 15.8 times more concentrated. Tulsa’s concentration of fabricated metal product manufacturing is three times the U.S. concentration, but its heat-exchanger manufacturing sub-cluster is 43.3 times more concentrated than at the U.S. level. General qualities that attract new companies to grow these clusters and others to Tulsa are a sound infrastructure, a cost of doing business that is 15 percent below the U.S. average and a cost of living that is 10 percent below the U.S. average. The strong concentrations of employment in these Tulsa-area clusters indicate that likely the Tulsa-area clusters are important to their respective industries nationwide and that they certainly are important locally.

Tulsa’s infrastructure for business includes the Port of Catoosa, an inland port that makes bulk shipping to and from coastal ports accessible and economical, and two central networks for broadband interconnect. Manpower recently ranked the city with the fifth best employment outlook in the nation for first quarter 2012. In 2012, the Brookings Institute named Tulsa one of the top 100 metros amoung the leading world economies.

Tulsa’s economic growth in 2008 and 2009 slowed along with the U.S. economy based on growth in employment and gross product, and Tulsa, like the rest of the nation, contracted in 2009, losing 28,000 jobs. Persistently high oil prices and firming natural gas prices allowed the Tulsa economy to come out of recession with the rest of the country. Because the Tulsa economy never contracted as much as the U.S. economy as a whole, Tulsa was positioned in 2011 to grow faster than the U.S. in both employment and the production of goods and services. With its cost of doing business at 15 percent under the U.S. average due to low rent, energy costs and taxes, Tulsa continued in 2011 to be a prime location for industry prospects looking to relocate or expand at a steady pace. In 2012, Tulsa’s gross product of goods and services should grow 3.3 percent to $43.3 billion. Employment should grow by 2.1 percent as global growth occurs and Tulsa businesses continue to add permanent jobs as they did throughout 2011.

Click on the link below to view a complete economic profile.
2012 Tulsa Economic Profile