By Erica Spaid Patras and Jacob Gagnon

Between 2000 to 2020, incomes grew at varying rates for US cities, metropolitan areas, and states. Ohio is no different, with most of its municipalities seeing increases in household incomes. While many Ohioans had higher incomes in 2020 than in 2000, these income gains were not spread evenly across the state and the speed at which incomes increased was not always consistent between municipalities across the observed time frame.

This blog post examines these household income trends for the state of Ohio at various geographic scales. GOPC compiled data from ACS 5-Year Estimates for the years 2000, 2010, 2015, and 2020 for Ohio’s largest 23 cities and 16 adjusted MSAs[1], as well as for Ohio and the nation itself to compare how quickly household incomes changed and by how much they changed over time. Read more on the current condition of Ohio’s legacy cities in our report Ohio + Columbus: A Tale of Two States.

Key Findings:

• At the state level, median income is growing but does not keep pace with the nation.

• Almost all municipalities saw rising incomes over the observed period.

• Incomes grew more and faster in MSAs than in cities.

• The rate of income growth varied dramatically among the places we looked. This trend is particularly apparent at the city level, and is impacting adjusted MSAs as well.

• The gap in incomes between metro areas and the cities that they contain is widening, increasing economic disparities between cities and their metros.

Median income for the state steadily grew between 2000 to 2020, but did not keep pace with income growth at the national level. From 2000 to 2020, median household income for the state of Ohio increased by 42% from $40,956 to $58,116, while national levels increased by 55% from $41,994 to $64,994. In 2000, the state median household income was below the national level by around $1,000, but by 2020 this gap widened to almost $7,000.

Incomes increased in all but one Ohio city from 2000 to 2020. Incomes grew in nearly all of the 23 cities studied, with some growing by over 40%, as seen in the table on the right (these are these only three cities that exceed the state average 42% growth in income, but they do not meet the national average of 55%). Additionally, 18 out of 23 of the cities examined saw at least a 20% increase in income, and 7 of those saw a 30% increase.

Of the cities whose median income increased, Canton had the lowest rate of growth at 14%, from $28,730 to $32,735. The city with the largest rate of growth was Massillon at 47%, from $32,734 to $48,268. Warren was the only city that experienced a drop in income of 10%, from $30,147 to $27,108.

Some Ohio cities are greatly outpacing others in income gains. The difference between the lowest and highest income cities widened between 2000 to 2020, as detailed in the table to the right. The differences between lowest and highest incomes at the city level increased 83% from 2000-2020.  

Cities increasingly lag behind state and national level income gains. As of 2020, no single Ohio city median income exceeds the state median income of $58,116. The median income for all Ohio cities in 2020 was $40,223. The median difference in income between cities and the state was $9,121 in 2000 and has increased by 96% to $17,893 in 2020. The median difference was calculated by establishing the combined median income for all the observed cities and subtracting this Ohio city median income from the state income for each assessed year. The table below details these trends.

All income growth slowed or reversed between 2010 to 2015 across geographies, but these trends rebounded from 2015 to 2020. Breaking down the data into smaller time frames reveals the role of the 2008 Recession in stagnating incomes across cities, the state, and the nation and their subsequent recovery. The median growth rate for income between 2000 to 2010 was 7% for Ohio cities, which lagged behind the 16% growth rate for Ohio and 24% growth rate for the nation.

Looking at growth rates for 2010-2015, the time period most impacted by the recession, cities saw a median loss in income of 2% while the state and country gained by 4%. Despite this dip in growth, Ohio city incomes rebounded between 2015 to 2020. During this time, city median incomes increased by a rate of 19%, which slightly outpaced the state’s growth of 18% and was only just behind the nation’s growth of 21%. During this 5-year period all city median incomes but one, discussed earlier, are growing at a rate that is more in line with state and national growth rates. The table below provide further details on these trends.

Incomes in Ohio’s adjusted MSAs have rebounded since the Recession. Also detailed in the above tables, between 2000 to 2010 incomes steadily grew in Ohio’s adjusted MSAs. Between 2010 to 2015 there was a slowdown in these increases, with two adjusted MSAs seeing a slight decrease in income, but generally they still saw increases, albeit at a slower rate than the previous timeframe. Lastly, between 2015 to 2020 these municipalities saw a rebound in incomes to their 2000 to 2010 rates, with the rate of increases generally exceeding previous years for most municipalities.

The median income of Ohio adjusted MSAs increased steadily within the observed period. No metro experienced a loss in income and growth rates ranged between 27% to 50%. Between 2000 to 2020, the difference between the lowest and highest income adjusted MSAs increased by over $6,000 from $20,755 to $27,157, seen in the table below. While this does indicate that income disparities are increasing between metro areas, the gap is widening at a much smaller rate for adjusted MSAs than for Ohio cities.

Median household incomes at the adjusted MSA level are closer to state and national incomes than their cities. Of the adjusted MSAs, 7 out of 16 had higher incomes than the state median of $58,116 in 2020 and 3 had higher incomes than the national median of $64,994. The difference between the combined adjusted MSA median income and state median incomes grew from $1,432 to $5,265 from 2000-2020. Incomes increased more at the national level than they did in Ohio adjusted MSAs from 2000-2020. While gains in incomes for these metros are generally not keeping pace with the state or national level, they are mostly outperforming their cities.

Four Ohio Adjusted MSAs have incomes that are growing at faster rates than the state as a whole. Between 2000 to 2020, the Canton-Massillon adjusted MSA grew by 43% from $37,667 to $53,810. During this same period, the Cincinnati adjusted MSA increased 44% from $47,885 to $69,023. The Portsmouth adjusted MSA also grew during this period by 49%, from $28,008 to $41,866. Lastly, the Columbus adjusted MSA grew during this period by 50% from $43,478 to $65,044. The increase in income for these 4 metros is particularly significant as they are much more in line with the state income growth rate of 42%. The Columbus and Cincinnati metro areas already have higher incomes than the state, and the other two are on track to catch up if growth rates go unchanged. Changes in median household income between 2000 to 2020 for adjusted metro areas is further detailed in the table to the right.

Incomes grew for nearly all adjusted MSAs and cities, but growth in city income lags significantly behind adjusted MSA incomes. When grouping cities with their associated adjusted MSAs, it is also clear that these cities are not seeing as fast of an increase as their associated metros. Between 2000 to 2020, the median difference in income between adjusted MSAs and the cities contained in their boundaries increased by 80% from $9,071 to $16,249.

[1] Adjusted Metro Statistical Area is a unique geography boundary created to capture the Ohio-exclusive activities for MSAs in the state. We merged county boundaries to create unified MSA boundaries, of which all non-Ohio counties were excluded that are normally defined as within these MSA boundaries. It is important to note that this definition impacts the Cincinnati and the Youngstown MSAs as they both overlap into neighboring states.