Hacker News Reader

Comment by simmons | Hacker News Reader

Yes, a lot of these sorts of measurements tend to just be population heat maps. Going down the list of most populous metro areas in the U.S. [1] or the most populous counties [2], all the top places are represented in the list. Although there are a few outliers at the edges (e.g. Charlotte, NC seems to punch above its weight).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populous_coun...

View on HN

Lowe's, Duke Energy... I'd probably have expected Wake County in that general area but that's something of a bias because of tech--and because it's the capital.

As the article notes, this isn't purely explained by population--but a lot of it is. It's maybe also worth noting that, for a lot of those metros, a decent chunk of the working population lives far enough outside of the metro area to be in another county. (Some businesses are too of course but probably less than the number of people.)

I work for an office in the RDU aka the Research Triangle. We're mostly or entirely remote. Lots of long commutes for the people who are obligated to come in.

Big names and decent salaries for the COL, though.

Charlotte is also like the 2nd or 3rd largest banking center in the country

They do display that comparison—that the counties they identify represent 32% of the GDP, but only 22% of the population. Still, they also show that it's been pretty constant, so I don't know if it's a meaningful grouping.

And that delta is cut in about half if you look at share of employment as opposed to total population (which includes retired people, etc.)

By the time you take into account commuters from outside the metro county, I wonder how much difference there is at all.

And clearly the two numbers have to be highly correlated. Most people live near where their jobs are and the combination of their consumption and the money they're paid are big components of GDP.

So while employment concentration and GDP concentration may be interesting, they're pretty much different measures of more or less the same thing.

On the flip side, the counties containing Orlando and Tampa aren't in the top 31 by GDP although they're in the top 31 by population. Similarly for Nassau and Suffolk counties (Long Island) in New York, I think, although I'm just working from the map in the OP so it's hard to be sure - I guess the money made by people living in those counties gets attributed to jobs in the city.

https://xkcd.com/1138/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com