Did Martin conduct Jaxport's study?
QuoteA PortMiami-commissioned study released Monday paints a rosy picture of the port's local economic impact — perhaps too rosy.
The study by Pennsylvania-based firm Martin Associates cost the port $81,000 and updates a similar study produced by the same firm in 2012.
According to the report, about 324,300 jobs were supported by the port in 2016. Last year, the port's total economic impact was $41.4 billion; it generated $1.5 billion in local taxes, Martin Associates found.
But those numbers, touted by the county, are best when served with one enormous grain of salt.
While the jobs and revenue reflect the port's sphere of influence, most of the impact cited by the study comes from "related" or "user" jobs, income, output and taxes. This is impact generated by exporters and importers that may ship some of their products through PortMiami to their eventual destination but would still exist if those goods were shipped through another regional port.
For instance, if grapefruit grown in Indian County weren't being shipped through PortMiami, it would be shipped through another port, "albeit at an increase in logistics costs," the study said.
So why are those jobs part of the impact report?
"It is important to demonstrate how important the port is to those exporters and importers," said John Martin, president of Martin Associates. The metric is used in all of the more than 500 reports the firm has conducted as a way to compare the ports' places in the overall cargo industry, he said.
Still, the numbers are being presented as indicative of the port's local impact — figures that at first glance may be misleading.
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Martin does just about every port's economic reports. For Jaxport, nearly 81% of the jobs estimated by Martin are "related jobs." However, Martin clearly states: "It is to be further emphasized that when the impact models are used for planning purposes, related jobs should not be used to measure the economic benefits of a particular project. Related jobs are not estimated with the same degree of defensibility as direct, induced and indirect jobs."