Remember how some local economy watchers recently acknowledged they take individual national rankings for our area with a grain a salt?
Here's one where they might need an entire shaker of salt: a new report by business newsletter 24/7 Wall Street that ranks Daytona Beach No. 25 on its list of the nation's "50 Worst Cities to Live In."
While the ranking comes as unwelcome news to local business leaders, it is just one in a number of national rankings in recent months, which have been largely positive.
It's the first year Daytona Beach has made the annual ranking, which only includes cities with populations of 65,000 or more.
The Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach metro area, which includes all of Volusia and Flagler counties, has been listed among the top places in the country to find a job, retire and buy a home, according to recent reports by publications and organizations including Manpower, US News & World Report, Realtor.com and ATTOM Data Solutions.
The less-than-glowing findings in 24/7 Wall Street's latest report also is largely based on 2016 Census Bureau data, which does not reflect the tremendous growth the area has seen the past couple of years, including the $400 million makeover of Daytona International Speedway, new beachside hotels, new shopping centers, and a surge in new housing developments including Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach.
The latter was recently named by Chicago-based 55Places.com as the country's "Most Popular Active Adult Community for 2018."
New York-based 24/7 Wall Street's description of Daytona Beach appears to be just of the city itself and not the overall Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach metro area, unlike other recent rankings. It includes statistics showing the city had 66,649 residents in 2016, a median home value of $132,300, a poverty rate of 20.1 percent, and just one out of five residents with a college degree.
Here's what 24/7 Wall Street had to say about our area: "Daytona Beach is one of the poorest cities in the country, with a median annual household income of just $31,273. The city's low median income is likely due in part to a lack of jobs. Some 6.3 percent of the Daytona Beach workforce is out of a job, well above the 4.9 percent annual U.S. unemployment rate.
"The lack of jobs may be partly due to the city's high crime rate, which may drive potential employers and small business owners away. There were 1,221 violent crimes and 6,297 property crimes for every 100,000 Daytona Beach residents in 2016, each nearly triple the comparable national crime rates."
The report's description of Daytona Beach sharply contrasts the rosy image painted by other recent national reports, including US News & World Report's ranking of Volusia-Flagler at No. 7 on its list of the "Most Popular Places to Retire," and the Manpower employment forecast that the Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach metro area would have the nation's eighth-highest percentage net gain in jobs in the first quarter of 2018.
24/7 Wall Street's data for the area also don't reflect the recent strides the local economy has made, including the drop in unemployment in Volusia County to a new post-recession low of 3/5 percent in April, the rise in average annual wages for Volusia County workers to $37,849, and the increase in median sale price for existing homes in the Daytona Beach area to a record high of nearly $235,000 in March.
"The numbers that are in the report are accurate and reflect the data from 2016," confirmed Christine Sikora, vice president of innovative workforce solutions at CareerSource Flagler Volusia, the local workforce development agency for the two counties.
However, John Adams, president of Adams, Cameron & Co. Realtors, said of the 24/7 Wall Street report on the Daytona Beach area, "Their statistics may be out of date, they don't jibe with our statistics. They also could be looking at a very narrow definition of the Daytona Beach area, a subset (that does not include neighboring, more affluent cities). If you don't include Port Orange and Ormond Beach, you may get a skewed view."
Nancy Keefer, president and CEO of the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce, offered a similar reaction.
"I know sometimes with crime statistics, we skew high because they only count residents," she said. "They don't take into account tourism. If they were to rank us per capita including our visitors, we probably wouldn't even rank (among the Worst 50)."
Volusia County drew an estimated 10 million visitors last year, a new record high for the area, according to local tourism officials.
Lori Campbell Baker, executive director of the Daytona Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, declined to weigh in, one way or the other. "We see them all the time," she said of the national rankings, which she described as "Listicals." "They are kind of popular, especially among people who may have a little bit of time to look at them and go, 'Wow,' " she said.
And it is true, Adams acknowledged, that the Daytona Beach area continues to struggle in a number of areas, including overall wages that remain lower than both the statewide and national averages, a growing homeless population, and chronically blighted areas, including swaths of the city's beachside, as well as Midtown. But, "That's true of any city," he said.
On the other hand, "There are a number of different ways to measure an area," Adams said. "If you only see five-star reviews, you start to question it a little bit."
Clayton Park can be reached at clayton.park@news-jrnl.com or at 386-681-2470.