Pillar 01 · Economic & Market Assessment
St. Petersburg by the numbers, today.
A live snapshot of the City's economic position — population dynamics, workforce capability, employment composition, and the location-quotient signal across the five 2014 Grow Smarter clusters.
City Population
263.6K
+6.5% since 2014
Median HHI
$67.5K
+22% since 2019 · slightly above FL median
Bachelor's Degree+
36.4%
vs 33.0% FL · 35.0% U.S.
Labor Force
144.3K
3.4% unemployment · 7.2% underemployed
Population Trend · 2014 – 2024
The Sunshine City keeps growing — quietly.
St. Petersburg added ~16,300 residents over the 10-year window — a 6.5% gain, well above coastal-FL median growth despite hard land-use constraints. Pinellas County tracks similar growth, signaling regional, not city-only, demand.
Employment composition
The job base is rebalancing — fast.
Health Care leads in absolute job count; Information & Tech and Professional Services lead in growth velocity. Manufacturing continues a slow, decade-long decline that the 2014 plan did not anticipate at this scale.
Information & Tech: +22.4% (5yr) — signal for AI/Data cluster acceleration
Professional Services: +19.7% — feeds FinTech and decision-sciences pivot
Health Care: 24,100 jobs — the unrecognized #1 cluster, missing from 2014
Manufacturing: -6.3% — refresh strategy with clean-tech specialization
Jobs by industry · 5-year growth color-coded
Workforce capability
A stronger talent base than its peers — except where it matters most for innovation
Educational attainment, demographic depth, and underemployment signals shape which clusters can scale and which require fresh capability building.
36.4%
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
Above FL median (33.0%), within 1pp of US average. Concentrated downtown and EDC of Tampa Bay.
56.7
Diversity Index
ACS-derived. Top quartile among Florida cities — a competitive advantage for inclusive cluster design.
$67.5K
Median Household Income
Slightly above FL median. Income mobility constrained in South St. Pete CRA — equity dialogue priority.
3.2M
MSA Labor Pool
Tampa-St. Pete-Clearwater MSA gives St. Pete a 1.7M-strong labor force draw across the bay.
Location quotient signal
Where does St. Pete actually concentrate?
An LQ above 1.0 means the cluster is more concentrated in St. Petersburg than the U.S. average. Three of the 2014 clusters cleared 1.0 in 2024; one is approaching; one is fading.
2024 Location Quotient
1.62
▲ 0.22 vs 2014 (1.40)
Marine & Life Sciences
Strong2024 Location Quotient
1.31
▲ 0.13 vs 2014 (1.18)
Creative Arts & Design
Strong2024 Location Quotient
1.07
▲ 0.05 vs 2014 (1.02)
Financial Services
Concentrated2024 Location Quotient
0.86
▲ 0.15 vs 2014 (0.71)
Data Analytics & Decision Support
Approaching2024 Location Quotient
0.71
▼ 0.21 vs 2014 (0.92)
Specialized Manufacturing
UnderweightSource posture · what changes at award
Numbers shown are professionally rounded for portal display, drawn from publicly available BLS QCEW, ACS 5-year, and FL DEO LMS data supplemented by HSG's baseline working dataset. At engagement award, all figures are re-derived from authoritative sources, with methodology documented in an appendix and the underlying data shared with the City Project Manager.