City of Virginia Beach
Forest Economics: Jobs and Economy
Forest Industry Economic Values - 1999
Economic Output - Dollars
| County/PDC | Direct | Indirect | Induced | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City of Virginia Beach | 55,516,885 | 12,504,043 | 34,435,759 | 102,456,687 |
| Hampton Roads PDC | 916,400,262 | 305,654,901 | 720,262,955 | 1,942,318,120 |
Employment
| County/PDC | Direct | Indirect | Induced | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City of Virginia Beach | 403 | 163 | 478 | 1,042 |
| Hampton Roads PDC | 4,715 | 3,163 | 9,958 | 17,836 |
Definition of IMPLAN terms
Direct Effects
Impact directly related to the selected industries production.
Indirect Effects
Additional impacts derived from businesses providing products or services to the selected industries.
Induced Effects
Additional impacts derived from employee spending.
Total Industry Output
Total value of production of goods and services by an industry for a given time frame.
IMPLAN, a program developed by the USDA Forest Service, is used to determine the economic impact from all types of business and activities. These activities include: opening or closing of businesses, forestry, tourism and recreational spending, large sporting events and other events, and building of structures. Information is gathered each year on all economic activities and a database is developed.
This information is used to run analysis on various scenarios (models). The models developed for these analyses are the forest-related industries in Virginia.
This information is based on local information, and caution must be used when interpreting it at the city or county level. The models act as an island where all inputs and outputs balance. This balance can skew the actual impacts in some areas; for example, if all the jobs are in one county but most of the employees or resources live or are found in other counties. More accurate results are usually found when doing regions, multiple counties, or planning districts.
Results should always be compared at the same level, such as retail with retail, manufacturing with manufacturing, etc. An example: A comparison of forest recreation to timber harvesting has compared tourist or recreational spending (retail) to stumpage value (raw resource). To give a true picture of the impact, all the value of processing to convert that wood to a final product for sale should be included.
For the forest-related industries model used here, the value was stopped at the manufacturing level. This is below the wholesale cost of goods. One reason for this is as you go further up the chain it is harder to determine what is actually a result of Virginia's forests. To illustrate the problem, when you go into a furniture store or home improvement store, how easy would it be to find out if those products or raw materials came from Virginia. Since these impacts and some other specific cases are left out, the values reported are on the conservative side. This may reduce the true impact of forest-related output, but makes it easier to defend the numbers. If there is a need to show a greater impact, or there are definite problems with some of the results, the model can be run, but it will require assistance at the local level to provide additional information.
Need more information?
Contact Charlie Becker, Resource Information Division.
Last modified 2006-08-09