The Oklahoma Department of Aerospace and Aeronautics partnered with Kimley-Horn to develop the Oklahoma Aerospace and Defense Industry Economic Impact Study. The study quantifies the economic impact associated with 107 public-use airports, five military installations, off-airport air cargo services, and aviation-reliant businesses across the state. It updates and expands the prior statewide study completed in 2017.
The study was initiated to evaluate the economic importance of Oklahoma’s airports and to provide the latest information on the impact of the state’s aerospace industry. It serves three purposes: to understand the role of aviation in supporting Oklahoma’s economy, to analyze airport activity and determine real-dollar economic impacts, and to convey the importance of Oklahoma’s airports to users, communities, and businesses statewide.
Site visits completed at all public-use airports: 4 commercial service and 103 general aviation.
Out-of-state passenger responses collected at the four commercial service airports, covering 23,323 travelers.
On-airport tenants surveyed across all study airports, representing more than 20,000 employees.
The study drew on six groups across Oklahoma’s aviation ecosystem: airport administration, airport tenants, commercial service visitors, general aviation visitors, military installations, and off-airport businesses.
The sum of full-time and part-time employees working within a defined geography or industry.
Total compensation paid to employees, including wages, salaries, employer-provided benefits, and taxes paid on behalf of those employees.
Compensation of employees, taxes paid on production and imports, and gross operating surplus; an industry’s gross output less the cost of its intermediate inputs.
The value of sales, receipts, and other operating income plus any inventory change.
The value of sales, receipts, and other operating income plus any inventory change
IMPLAN is a widely used economic impact modeling platform approved by the FAA for use in statewide studies. It relies on state and regional economic data to estimate the contributions that employee and business spending bring to a local or regional economy. IMPLAN was used to process airport-reported data and to fill gaps where detailed information was unavailable — for example, estimating the number of construction jobs supported by reported capital expenditures. IMPLAN also applies retail margining so that only the revenue earned by a retailer is captured, avoiding double counting of goods originally purchased from a manufacturer.
Inflation influences the outcomes of economic impact studies by altering the underlying cost structure and spending behavior that drive model results. Rising prices increase operating costs for businesses, affect household spending patterns, and shift the relative scale of economic activity across industries. These inflation-driven changes flow through the model’s multipliers and industry relationships, and should be considered when comparing results to the 2017 study.
Other Industry Changes Since 2017
Increased labor costs · Workforce shortages · COVID-19 recovery · Record inflation · Rising construction costs