Super Bowl XLIII is being played this week in Tampa, Fl., pitting the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Arizona Cardinals. Because it's Super Bowl week and because Super Bowls are purported to be contributors to local economic growth, I am going to do a series of posts this week looking at employment levels in local economies in which recent Super Bowls were played.
On January 26th, 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders to win Super Bowl XXXVII held at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, Ca. I take monthly data generated by surveys given by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and graphically examine the employment situation in the San Diego metropolitan area before and after Super Bowl XXXVIII. All data is seasonally adjusted.
The following graph shows the total level of employment in the San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos area from January 1997 until November 2008. The data were obtained from the Current Employment Statistics database. In each of the graphs below, the vertical line shows approximately the time when Super Bowl XXXVII took place in San Diego. Employment levels are given in thousands.
Total employment grew from about 1.03 million in January 1997 to about 1.29 million (estimated) in November of 2008. In January of 2003, employment stood at 1.24 million. Employment growth leveled off beginning in 2000 and continued leveling off until after Super Bowl XXXVII ended.
This can be seen more readily by adjusting the vertical axis to start at 1,000.
In the period from January 2000 to January 2001, the San Diego economy added approximately 33,000 jobs. But from January 2001 until January 2004, the San Diego economy added approximately 37,000 new jobs.
The following graph shows the year-ago growth rate of employment in the San Diego economy.
The growth rate of employment showed a trend of falling off from the end of 1998, leveling off in January of 2002, creeping back up starting in late 2003, leveling off starting in mid 2004, and then falling again starting in the middle of 2005.
Part of this employment growth can be explained by general economic conditions. The period starting in early 2000 and ending in 2003 coincided with the bursting of the tech bubble and the September 11th attacks, both of which slowed the overall economy. The following graph shows the year -ago growth rates of San Diego area quarterly employment and US Real GDP (the latter obtained from the FRED2 database).
Not surprisingly, the growth rate of employment in the San Diego area follows the growth rate of US GDP fairly closely. Because a local mega event such as the Super Bowl is not going to have a measurable impact on national GDP, at this point there is little reason to believe that Super Bowl XXXVII had much if any impact on San Diego area overall employment.
But what about the distribution of jobs - the kinds of jobs existing at a point in time? The next two diagrams were taken from data generated by and obtained from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. This data is useful because it breaks down employment into specific industries. Because mega events are tourist events, I focus on total employment and employment in the leisure and hospitality industry. The graphs are for San Diego County. The following graph shows year-ago growth rates for the leisure and hospitality industry and for total employment overall.
While Super Bowl XXXVII had little observable impact on overall employment in San Diego County (as noted above), it's readily apparent that it had an impact on the Leisure and Hospitality industry as the year-ago growth rate in January soared to over 7%. The growth rate of employment in that industry never again reached even 6%, suggesting the distributional impact was short-lived.
The following graph shows the share of total employment given by the leisure and hospitality industry in San Diego County. Note that the graph starts at a 10% share.
Not surprisingly, the share takes on a cyclic, sawtooth form, reaching a peak each summer and reaching a trough each winter. Over time, leisure and hospitality's share of San Diego employment increased from about 10.5% in January of 2001 to about 12.5% in June of 2008 (the last data value that I have). But note that in every cycle but one, the share reaches its low in January. That one exception occurred around Super Bowl XXXVII. In that cycle, the share reached its lowest point in November of 2002.
So what does this all tell us? It tells us that in terms of jobs, Super Bowl XXXVII did have an impact on the San Diego area economy. But it had little, if any, impact on the overall number of jobs. Instead, its impact was on the short-term composition of the San Diego area economy.