Earlier this month the US Bureau of Economic Analysis released its County Estimates for local area gross domestic product (GDP). Cleveland’s core county, Cuyahoga, grew at 3.3% between 2021 and 2022. A 3.3% annual growth rate is significant, and if constant, would be the equivalent of 38% growth compounded over ten years, and a full doubling of the economy in 22 years.

Comparing Cleveland to other cities we track for economic growth and development, Cleveland surpassed the GDP growth of all of our standard benchmarking cities—Detroit (2.5%), New York (2.3%), Philadelphia (2.3%), Chicago (2.2%), and Pittsburgh (1.0%). Compared to other cities within the state of Ohio, Cleveland led market growth as well surpassing Cincinnati (1.5%) and Columbus, Ohio (0.6%). Columbus had the second-lowest growth rate in our study, above only San Francisco (-2.4%), which was the only city with negative growth. The sunbelt cities of Miami (5.8%) and Dallas (5.7%) led the growth of all cities in our analysis, continuing the trend in those cities, and represented the only two cities that surpassed Cleveland growth rates.

The table below depicts the real change in GDP from 2021 to 2022 of 15 economic markets we studied, using data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.