Snead: Lawton exceeds national average in exporting what it produces

While Lawton is lagging in some categories used to evaluate economic development, it far exceeds the national average when it comes to exporting what it produces here.

The community can thank Fort Sill for that, said noted economist Mark Snead, president and founder of RegionTrack and one of the keynote speakers for the Mayor’s Economic Summit held at FISTA Innovation Park on Wednesday.

“National defense is not consumed in Lawton,” Snead said, explaining one of the four dominant factors in rating a community’s economic success is exporting what is made here, and for Lawton that is what Mayor Stan Booker calls the most dominant component of the region’s economic engine.

Fort Sill’s training missions — creating a product that is exported to sites around the globe — fits into the export category, meaning what is produced is traded outside the region. And, Lawton is double the national average in that category, Snead said, explaining that unlike other areas of Oklahoma and the state itself, agriculture, oil and gas are not driving economic factors here; government and the military are. He said that is why the FISTA — whose tenants are linked to military defense contracts — is a crucial component of the local economy.

Lawton also compares well to the national average in another category: education of its labor force. The region is about 0.25 percent less than the national average in that category.

“Education is not your problem,” Snead said, adding Oklahoma as a whole “looks a lot like Texas” in that category, and Texas is not having any problems with economic development.

But, where the city loses major points is labor force involvement (those who can be in the labor force are working), which is 10 percent below the national average; and capital usage, which is 30 percent below the national average. Capital usage is a state-wide problem, Snead said, adding neither Lawton nor the state in general is capital-driven. Other indications: while manufacturing provides many jobs across the country, in Lawton it only accounts for 8 percent of all jobs.

Snead said while other factors can be considered to determine economic health, these four are the most important.

For example, labor force quality is important because research has repeatedly shown the most educated and skilled a workforce is, the higher wages are and the better the potential for wage growth. There is some good news in this category: Oklahoma in general has a higher percentage of people with high school diplomas, based on past education initiatives. But, it falls short in labor force participation and that is not news.

“Oklahoma has struggled for decades with a low labor participation rate,” Snead said.

By contrast, Lawton’s export-based activity numbers put it at one of the highest rankings. Snead agrees Fort Sill is the top engine driving Southwest Oklahoma’s economy, adding a $1.5 billion payroll into the region annually. But he said Goodyear is a classic example of export-based activity, explaining its products — tires — are made here, then sold across the globe.

Low participation by the local workforce is influenced by multiple factors, including the number of retirees who call Lawton-Fort Sill home and the number of children in the community (neither work). Even adjusting for those factors, Lawton still has a problem with those who can work opting not to.

“You have one of the lowest numbers,” he said, adding there has been little net improvement in those numbers since the mid-1980s. “You have an underemployed and an under-used workforce out there.”

Other notable factors:

• Lawton’s workforce averages 13.34 years of education, or 1.34 years beyond high school. Snead said low education numbers is a state-wide problem, not just Lawton’s.

• Personal income contributes $6.1 million to the local economy. While $1.5 billion is associated with Fort Sill, $2 billion comes from unearned sources such as retirement payments.

• Per capital income was $47,719 in Lawton in 2022, about 73 percent of the national average. By contrast, the cost of living in Lawton was 85.3 percent of the U.S. average.