Demographics of Europe

[New Brisavoine]

Now that we have precise and homogeneous definitions for the 3 largest metro areas in the UK and in France, here are some economic comparisons.

First the number of jobs in each metro area in 2011 based on the number of jobs in the MSOAs at the UK March 2011 census and in the communes at the Jan. 2011 census. Note that these census figures underestimate the real number of jobs by 5% to 10%, but the underestimate is roughly the same in the French and in the UK censuses, so the figures can be compared with each other.

Number of jobs in early 2011:
- metro area of Paris: 5,768,524
- metro area of London: 5,447,592
- metro area of Manchester: 1,226,158
- metro area of Birmingham: 1,088,876
- metro area of Lyon: 985,251
- metro area of Marseille: 684,593

Next, let's look at the GDP of these 6 metro areas. Eurostat has finally published the rebased (2010 rebasing including essentially R&D, and then other stuff such as the much talked about prostitution revenues, in the GDP of each country/region) regional GDP figures complete as of 2012.

In order to calculate the exact GDP of each metro area, what I've done is I've taken each NUTS-3 region, and counted the number of jobs inside the NUTS-3 which belonged to MSOAs or communes of each metro area, and then I've assigned the GDP of the NUTS-3 to each metro area in proportion of the number of metropolitan jobs there (so for example, given that 70.8% of the jobs in Surrey are located in MSOAs which belong to the London metro area, I've assigned 70.8% of Surrey's GDP to the London metro area).

The method is the best estimate we can get for metropolitan GDPs in the absence of detailed GDP figures at the MSOA and commune level (I doubt that detailed figures would retrieve a result much different than those below anyway).

GDP in 2012 (in US dollars at market exchange rates):
- metro area of Paris: 810.8 billion US dollars
- metro area of London: 676.9 billion US dollars
- metro area of Lyon: 109.1
- metro area of Manchester: 95.6
- metro area of Birmingham: 85.8
- metro area of Marseille: 74.9

Regarding the fluctuation of exchange rates recently, what I've done is I've looked at the GDP growth of each metro area in 2013 (we don't have GDP figures for the French NUTS-3 in 2013 yet, but growth rates can be estimated with the NUTS-2 regions; no data are available for 2014 yet), and then estimated the GDP of each metro area in 2013. Based on these 2013 figures, it looks like the GDP of the London metro area would be higher than the GDP of the Paris metro area if the pound was worth more than 1.44 euros. The GDP of the Manchester metro area would be higher than the GDP of the Lyon metro area if the pound was worth more than 1.37 euros. The GDP of the Birmingham metro area would be higher than the GDP of the Lyon metro area if the pound was worth more than 1.53 euros.

So it looks like Paris has an economy firmly larger than the London economy (due to the small size of the London metro area), whereas Lyon and Manchester are currently more or less on par given the very high value of the pound at the moment, but Lyon will again be ahead of Manchester when the pound falls back to more normal levels. It's quite impressive considering that Lyon has a smaller job market than Manchester, but I guess it says more about the complete disregard for the northern English cities by the British government in the past 30 years than about any Lyonnaise prowess (although Lyon does have a GDP per capita roughly similar to Milan, so it's a nice achievement nonetheless).

Finally, let's compare the economy of these metro areas to the economy of the US MSAs.

GDP in 2012 (in US dollars at market exchange rates):
- New York MSA: 1,435.3 billion US dollars
- Los Angeles MSA + Riverside-San Bernardino MSA: 926.5
- metro area of Paris: 810.8
- metro area of London: 676.9
- Chicago MSA: 575.8
- San Francisco-Oakland MSA + San Jose MSA: 564.4
- Houston MSA: 489.2
- Washington MSA: 460.0
- Dallas MSA: 432.4
...
...
...
- Pittsburgh MSA: 127.0
- Cleveland MSA: 120.4
- Indianapolis MSA: 120.3
- Tampa-St. Petersburg MSA: 117.7
- Cincinnati MSA: 115.1
- Kansas City MSA: 114.0
- metro area of Lyon: 109.1
- Columbus MSA: 108.8
- Orlando MSA: 106.4
- Sacramento MSA: 103.5
- Austin MSA: 100.1
- Nashville MSA: 97.3
- metro area of Manchester: 95.6
- Milwaukee MSA: 92.2
- San Antonio MSA: 91.9
- Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk MSA: 91.4
- Las Vegas MSA: 89.1
- Virginia Beach-Norfolk MSA: 86.9
- metro area of Birmingham: 85.8
- Hartford MSA: 84.3
- New Orleans MSA: 82.4
- metro area of Marseille: 74.9
- Salt Lake City MSA: 73.5

Nashville has an economy larger than Manchester! I wonder what the Victorians would have thought of that...