River Economy considers two metrics to quantify changes in the contribution of river-related businesses to local economies. Specifically, we assessed percent change from 2019 to 2020 in the proportion of all jobs that were from river-related businesses and the percent change in the total income per river job generated from river-related businesses. Total income per river job includes the sum of wages, income, and taxes divided by the number of river jobs. River-related businesses were selected by stakeholders and included businesses from farming, utilities, construction, manufacturing, retail, transportation, real estate, service industry, tourism, and government sectors. This indicator helps us understand whether river-related businesses are growing or declining in the region.
How is it scored?
The percent changes in the proportion of jobs and total income per job were scored using the equation, y = 10x + 50. With this scoring scheme, an increase of 5% was scored a 100 and a decrease of 5% was scored a 0. The scores for proportion of jobs and total were averaged to calculate a watershed score. Watershed scores were population-weighted to calculate an overall score for southeast Michigan.
Data source: https://implan.com/.