Greater Philadelphia’s economy is diverse, supported by dozens of public- and private-sector organizations working to promote growth, attract investment, and advance a wide range of industries and regional priorities. DVRPC plays a critical coordinating role by integrating economic development considerations with land use and transportation planning.
As the Economic Development District for the nine-county region, DVRPC aligns transportation investments with a regional land use vision to improve access to jobs, strengthen freight networks, support commercial centers, and encourage reinvestment in existing communities.
Growing Greater Philadelphia, developed through guidance and support of regional partners and stakeholders, acts as a regional framework for economic development partners to prioritize U.S. EDA investments over the next five years. The report adheres to the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) guidelines and includes a regional snapshot of the most current population, employment, and business data; a regional assessment of the region’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; an analysis of economic trends and sectors; updated goals and strategies as part of a regional action plan; future workforce considerations; and an analysis of the region’s economic vulnerability.
FY 2024-2028 Growing Greater Philadelphia (PDF)
Regional Economy Trends
The advancement of digitalization is altering where and how we work (telework), as well as the production and distribution of goods and services (automation). Growing Greater Philadelphia highlights how these trends may impact the region’s economic sectors and what types of policies and programs should be employed to sustain the regional workforce.
The Comparing Regional Economies dashboard measures telework capacity and automation risk within the top 10 economic sectors in Greater Philadelphia and compares each sector to peer regions.
Telework
Increased telework capacity means that employers now have access to a national, or even global, talent pool. Workers are no longer constrained by the job and housing market in the city in which their job is located. However, telework capacity is greater in some sectors of the economy than others, meaning some occupations are still tethered to the physical location of their job.
Automation
Routine jobs are at the greatest risk of losing their jobs, or having their job functions change, due to digitally-enabled automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. These jobs can be broken down into two categories: cognitive occupations, such as secretaries and customer service representatives; and manual or physical occupations, such as truck drivers and factory workers. Both types can be found throughout each economic sector in Greater Philadelphia at varying degrees.