Borrowing from an approach that sometimes appears in the finance sections of the popular press, LSGL analysis is a handy and versatile way to compare, portray and classify the patterns of real manufacturing earnings growth across all of Oklahoma's 77 counties. In finance, this technique is used for comparing and assessing the market performance of individual securities or across industry sectors. For example, the performance of the 30 stocks contained within Dow are compared with one another over the past week in contrast to their performance over the past month using the Dow's respective averages as the points of reference.

Here in this Oklahoma Regional Economic Analysis Project report, we adopt this approach to gauge and compare the real manufacturing earnings growth of Oklahoma's 77 counties over the latest available year (2022) against the backdrop of their growth over the long term period (2010-2022). In so doing we classify their growth and performance into 4 broad categories: Leading, Slipping, Gaining and Lagging.

This figure displays the 77 counties of Oklahoma as dots on a scattergram, with the vertical axis representing the average annual real manufacturing earnings growth rate over the long-term period (2010-2022), and the horizontal axis representing the real manufacturing earnings growth rate for the near-term (2022).

This figure sets apart those counties whose long-term real manufacturing earnings growth exceeded the statewide average of 2.21%, by portraying them in the top two quadrants demarcated at 2.21% on the vertical axis. County whose long-term average annual real manufacturing earnings growth rate trailed the statewide average (2.21%) are distributed in the bottom two quadrants. In all, 46 counties surpassed the statewide average over 2010-2022, while 13 counties fell below.

Similarly, the two quadrants on the right of this figure present the positions of the 23 counties whose most recent (2022) real manufacturing earnings growth rate exceeded the statewide average (12.65%). The two quadrants on the left feature those 36 counties whose real manufacturing earnings growth over 2022 trailed the statewide average.

Accordingly, each quadrant portrays the performance of all 77 counties corresponding with their long-term (2010-2022) and near-term (2022) performance relative to their respective statewide averages of 2.21% over 2010-2022 and 12.65% over 2022:

Leading counties () (top-right quadrant)...are counties whose average annual real manufacturing earnings growth rate surpassed the statewide average both long-term (2.21%) and near-term (12.65%).

Slipping counties () (top-left quadrant)...are counties whose long-term average annual real manufacturing earnings growth rate exceeded the statewide average (2.21%), but whose near-term growth has "slipped" by falling below the Oklahoma average (12.65%).

Gaining counties () (bottom-right quadrant)...are counties whose long-term average annual real manufacturing earnings growth rate fell below the statewide average (2.21%), but whose near-term growth has "gained" by registering above the average (12.65%) statewide.

Lagging counties () (bottom-left quadrant)...are counties whose average annual real manufacturing earnings growth rate fell under the statewide average both long-term (2.21%) and near-term (12.65%).

This figure depicts the distributions of the 10 Oklahoma counties classified as Lagging (bottom-left quadrant). These counties trailed the statewide average annual real manufacturing earnings growth both long-term (2010-2022 = 2.21%) as well as near-term (2022 = 12.65%). Again, each county is identified by its corresponding ranking based on it's average annual real manufacturing earnings growth rate over 2010-2022.

13% of Oklahoma's counties, 10 of 77, are characterized here as Lagging (). Those counties ranked by their long-term average include: