March 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 18

RESEARCH
Parks and Recreation Is an
Engine of Economic Activity
By Kevin Roth
M
ore than 160,000 full-time park and recreation professionals
care for millions of acres of public land, support a vast array
of facilities and amenities, and deliver impactful programming
to our nation's cities, towns and counties. Signifying
how this work contributes to healthy, vibrant and resilient communities are
NRPA's Three Pillars of Health and Wellness, Equity, and Conservation.
Parks and recreation also is an
engine of economic activity. The
Economic Impact of Local Parks report
(nrpa.org/EconomicImpact),
released last summer, found local
park and recreation agencies'
operations and capital spending
generated nearly $218 billion in
economic activity and supported
1.25 million jobs across the United
States in 2019. These results
come from the fourth of a series of
analyses commissioned by NRPA
and conducted by Dr. Terry Clower
of the Center for Regional Analysis
at George Mason University.
Federal government data tell a
similar story. The Outdoor Recreation
Jobs and Economic Impact
Act of 2016 (tinyurl.com/
3236esbx) mandated the Bureau of
Economic Analysis (BEA) to conduct
" an assessment and analysis
of the outdoor recreation economy
of the United States and the effects
attributable to it on the overall U.S.
economy. " The BEA, a part of the
Department of Commerce, may be
best known for measuring the size
of the U.S. economy through its
calculation of the Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) (tinyurl.com/
24rfw4rn). The resulting Outdoor
Recreation satellite account tracks
18 Parks & Recreation | MARCH 2 0 2 3
" the economic activity as well as
the sales or receipts generated by
outdoor recreational activities. "
The most recent BEA estimate
(tinyurl.com/yrfxut2f) finds the
outdoor recreation economy
accounted for $454 billion of GDP
in 2021. As GDP was more than $23
trillion that same year, the outdoor
recreation sector was 1.9 percent of
the U.S. economy. More notably,
the outdoor
recreation economy
enjoyed a robust recovery from the
coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemicsparked
recession in 2020. The
outdoor recreation economy
surged 18.9 percent in 2021 after
contracting 21.6 percent in the
prior year. By comparison, the U.S.
economy
swelled
5.9
percent
in
2021. The same report finds that
the outdoor
recreation economy
supported 4.543 million jobs. This
represented 3 percent of employment
in the United States. These workers
earned $224.267 billion in wages
and benefits, or 1.8 percent of total
compensation in the nation.
Like the NRPA economic impact
study, BEA breaks down its outdoor
recreation economy data for
all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
From here, we learn that
the states for which the outdoor
| PARK S ANDRECRE AT ION . OR G
recreation economy represents the
largest percentage of their respective
economies are:
* Hawaii (4.8 percent of its economy)
*
Montana (4.4 percent)
* Vermont (4.1 percent)
* Alaska (3.6 percent)
* Wyoming (3.6 percent)
So, you may be asking which set
of data - NRPA or BEA - you
should use to make the economic
case for parks and recreation. The
answer is both.
The BEA report looks at a vast
swath of outdoor recreation, including
bicycling, boating, hiking,
outdoor concerts, gardening and
everything that supports these activities
(including activities in the
private sector). The NRPA report
looks at the economic impact of the
operations and capital spending of
the nation's more than 10,000 local
park and recreation agencies, including
activities that occur in the
outdoors and those inside (including
your agency's out-of-school
time programming, recreation centers
and nutrition programs). So,
the two reports cover some of the
same activities and infrastructure,
but each also covers items that the
other report does not.
The combination of both sets of
data reinforces the message that
parks and recreation is not only
a leader for leisure, health and
well-being, conservation, and equity.
The hard work of professionals
and volunteers across the nation
also is an important contributor to
economic prosperity.
Kevin Roth is Vice President of Research,
Evaluation and Technology at NRPA
(kroth@nrpa.org).
http://www.nrpa.org/EconomicImpact https://tinyurl.com/yrfxut2f https://tinyurl.com/3236esbx https://tinyurl.com/3236esbx http://www.tinyurl.com/
March 2023 - Parks & Recreation

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