Headwaters Economics
http://headwaterseconomics.org/land/west-is-best-value-of-public-lands/
General findings:
- Higher-wage services industries, such as high-tech and health care, are leading the West’s job growth and diversifying the economy.
- Entrepreneurs and talented workers are choosing to work where they can enjoy outdoor recreation and natural landscapes.
- Increasingly, chambers of commerce and economic development associations in every western state are using the region’s national parks, monuments, wilderness areas and other public lands as a tool to lure companies to relocate.
- High-wage services industries also are using the West’s national parks, monuments, wilderness areas and other public lands as a tool to recruit and retain innovative, high-performing talent.
Specific points:
- From 1970 to 2010, the West’s employment grew by 152 percent compared to 78 percent for the rest of the country.
- This western job growth was almost entirely in services industries such as health care, real estate, high-tech, and finance and insurance, which created 19.3 million net new jobs, many of them high-paying.
- Western non-metropolitan counties with more than 30 percent of the county’s land base in federal protected status such as national parks, monuments, wilderness, and other similar designations increased jobs by 345 percent over the last 40 years. By comparison, similar counties with no protected federal public lands increased employment by 83 percent.
- In 2010, per capita income in western non-metropolitan counties with 100,000 acres of protected public lands is on average $4,360 higher than per capita income in similar counties with no protected public lands.
