The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

5 Year Private Sector Job Growth
(From Business Journals "Oct 2013 Economic Index")  

Tulsa               -3.30%
OKC                +3.29%
Salt Lake City  +2.96
Nashville         +7.92
Austin             +10.9%
Denver           +2.01%
Charlotte        +1.07%
Little Rock       -0.25%
Jacksonville     -0.82%
Dallas-FW        +5.63%
Columbus       +3.40%
Buffalo NY       +1.11%
Omaha            -0.36%
Detroit             -1.10%
 

Pretty surprising.  AA and Dollar Thrifty?  Per the TW call center jobs are booming though.  :/

I didn't think Tulsa had a high concentration of eastern Indians, Filipinos, or Pakistanis to adequately staff call centers.

Call centers are mostly dead in this country

http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/employment/jobs-tulsa-area-has-right-ingredients-to-be-mecca-for/article_764a4655-db84-513e-846a-d2ee89de8965.html (http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/employment/jobs-tulsa-area-has-right-ingredients-to-be-mecca-for/article_764a4655-db84-513e-846a-d2ee89de8965.html)

 Well, apparently we are not gaining enough call center jobs fast enough to offset what we are losing/have lost, elsewhere.

I still wonder what we are doing as a city to get our growth going better?  I don't see the "business as usual" thing working well for us especially as we watch other cities move further ahead thus only increasing the competitive/attractiveness gap.  

Kathy Taylor, what have you done with our Artist?!

I would be interested to see the growth in the past 2 years, which I would imagine would be positive.  Tulsa has had trouble coming out of the recession with our aerospace and manufacturing sectors taking big hits.  We have the energy industry which has done consistently well and the aforementioned call centers but I guess not well enough to offset losses in other areas.  The largest amount of good jobs in Tulsa are in the healthcare and energy sectors, and both are growing.  Tulsa also has a large number of small businesses, more so than many other comparable cities.

I definitely think the poor leadership at City Hall has affected our job growth.  Dewey has been terrible for the city, and I'm not sure Kathy Taylor would be any better.  Higher education should be the top priority and neither candidate has raised that flag.  

Tulsa traditionally rebounds slowly out of recessions.  We need to continue growing the energy and technology sectors, and pushing for expanded public higher education in the city.  We need something to build momentum.  I think the Gathering Place plus eventual river and mass transit improvements, could be that spark but those are still a few years away from reality.

Tulsa seems to be in a decade long job creation rut.  The current mayor does not inspire confidence that he has a plan to do anything different to get us out of the rut.  The former mayor’s track record during much better economic times was equally weak.

I assume OKC’s numbers do not include the recent adjustments at Chesapeake.  Nonetheless, it is disheartening to see how we continue to lose ground to our neighbor down the turnpike.

OKC has been killing us in overall population growth and job creation.  They have a few built-in advantages like OU (both the Norman campus and the med center) plus state govt and a large AFB.  But other than that the only reason why they are doing well is because of their leadership both public and private.  Tulsa has a very conservative, smug group of leaders that want the city to stay the same which obviously hasn't worked very well as other cities pass us.  I'm encouraged by the strong group of young professionals in Tulsa but don't see anything else changing anytime soon.  I don't want to us to be like our other regional river cities Wichita, Little Rock and Memphis with stagnant growth, crime and declining quality of life.

Convergys in OKC area has been growing...parking lot getting fuller every week.