Relationship to Keystone Indicators
The following Thriving Economy keystone indicators are representative of primary measures of the health and resilience of our economy over the long term. Although there is a strong high-level correlation between our plan for physical development and these indicators, it is recognized that they will often not be directly applicable to individual development plans or to city initiatives.
Economic Indicators
The economic indicators for PlanCOS include the following measures, each of which are available from existing data sources and are easily comparable with other jurisdictions:
- New jobs added that are at or above the median salary for the region;
- Unemployment Rate: annual employment rate;
- Median Wages Compared with State; and
- Residential Units Added.
These measures are chosen because together they reflect a combination of the economic outcomes PlanCOS is intended to support as well as the economic activity that will be needed to allow many of the recommendations in the Plan to be fiscally sustainable with private and public sector resources. From another perspective, many of the other recommendations of PlanCOS are intended to encourage the conditions that will be necessary to attract the economic development and workforce that will contribute to a sustainably strong economy. Although the importance of these interrelationships between high quality and attractive physical development, and a strong economy are implicitly understood, we also recognize that it will be challenging to directly tie progress with economic indicators to progress related to physical development.