Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian podcast, featuring the Sunshine State’s brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida and its millions of weekly visitors. In this episode created by SalterMitchell PR, our executive producer Heidi Otway, the president of SalterMitchell PR, talks to Dr. Sean Snaith, the director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting.

Heidi Otway: Dr. Snaith, thank you so much for being a guest on this Fluent in Floridian podcast. We are excited to have you to learn more about how you became one of the nation’s top economists in the field of business and economic forecasting.

Dr. Sean Snaith: Well, my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

Heidi Otway: So I want to start at the beginning and kind of talk about what spurred your interest in studying the economy and economic forecasting. How did this begin?

Dr. Sean Snaith: Well, I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up during the 1970s, which was a tumultuous time for the US economy in general with high rates of unemployment and inflation, but even more so perhaps for the Pittsburgh economy as the steel industry, which had so long dominated the economy was in pretty steep decline. They didn’t call it globalization back then, but it was competition from South Korean steel manufacturers that were making steel more efficiently and with different furnaces than the Pittsburgh companies were. And so a lot of these firms were shutting down, so Pittsburgh was kind of suffering beyond what the rest of the country was doing.

Dr. Sean Snaith: And I had grown up in, well, what we call poverty, at least here in this country, which for four billion people around the planet would seem like a nice life. But on welfare and food stamps, and so we were never homeless fortunately, but things were a struggle as well growing up. And just sort of, I think, watching everything on in the economy with the steel industry and inflation and high unemployment, and then my own personal situation, I think that probably planted the seeds of what ultimately I did as a career. But I went to school, college in sort of a pre-med track. So I was taking the sciences and that, but I went to a liberal arts school that required you to take a lot of courses across disciplines, and one of those courses I took was a writing intensive macroeconomics course. And there I started to learn all these terms and all these acronyms and concepts that as a child I heard and read but didn’t really fully understand. And so I think that is when those seeds started to germinate.

Heidi Otway: And then what was your childhood like? I mean, were you all having conversations in your household about the economy? So that when you finally got to college, you were like, “Oh, I remember we talked about this at the dinner table.”

Dr. Sean Snaith: Yeah, no. It was just my mother, and she struggled. Not formally educated, and so there weren’t any sort of in depth discussions. But I mean, I do remember one time asking her, and she didn’t really have an answer, after seeing the story on the news I just couldn’t understand why if these steel workers wanted to work, why wouldn’t they let them work? I couldn’t quite reconcile what was going on there. So it was just more sort of day to day experiences and observations. And as I said, I didn’t really think about studying it and kind of accidentally ended up in this discipline. And I could have been a real doctor, I suppose, but here I am an economist instead.

Heidi Otway: So when you were in college and you found that you enjoyed learning all about economics, what happened after that? How did you actually start into your career, and I’m sure go to grad school and all of those kinds of things? Tell me about that part of your journey.

Dr. Sean Snaith: Sure. I was, as I said, pre-med my first year, but then as a sophomore I switched majors and started to take the courses that required the major and just kept learning more things. And at the time I thought I would probably go into sort of an investment or banking type career track. And it really wasn’t, I had a couple of internships at banks during the summer, but it really wasn’t until my senior year that I realized that that probably wasn’t what I wanted to do. And I decided kind of late in the game that I’d like to go to graduate school, and so it was kind of a scramble to get prerequisites and background courses that are necessary. There’s a pretty big gap between under graduate economics and graduate economics in terms of background and tools that you need to be successful in the latter. So fortunately I had some great professors, it was a smaller school. I was able to get some custom independent studies that were really geared towards getting me somewhat prepared for the rigors of graduate school.

Heidi Otway: So when you got to graduate school what were you thinking as far as what you wanted to be when you grow up?

Dr. Sean Snaith: I don’t know, the first year I was thinking what a tremendous mistake I’ve made [inaudible 00:06:19].

Heidi Otway: Why did you think you made a mistake?

Dr. Sean Snaith: Well, you’re surrounded by… Everyone’s a nerd that got A’s in college and most of them are smarter than you, and so this is an uncomfortable place to be inserted all of the sudden. So I thought maybe I had vastly overestimated my abilities. But yeah, I, as I got accustomed and got a little deeper into my studies, I was thinking about the options. But I had had a chance as an undergrad for a week to teach a course for a professor that that was traveling, and so that was my first experience teaching was as an undergrad. And I taught for a week and I quickly learned the lesson that you don’t really know something until you have to explain it to other people. I had gotten a A in the course I was teaching, but man, I didn’t really understand it to the depth that I needed to be able to explain it to someone else.

Dr. Sean Snaith: So I got a taste of that and I enjoyed that. And then of course during graduate school I was able to teach a fair number of courses and just generally enjoyed that and the of freedom to investigate and study issues and concepts and problems that were interesting to me. This wasn’t an assignment being handed down to me, a go do this. It was like, “Oh, I’m interested in this, so I’m going to dig in and I’m going to more about this topic and do some research.” And so that was, I mean, really a good fit, I think, for me in terms of career, in terms of, I think how my personality or psychology is. That having that kind of freedom and being able to satisfy curiosities as they popped up either in the economy or in my studying of some other related topic.

Heidi Otway: So that was like a turning point in your life, and so what happened when you graduated? Did you continue to teach? What was the next step in that journey?

Dr. Sean Snaith: I did. I’ve been at the University of Central Florida now for 15 years, but prior to my arrival here in Florida I was a bit of a hobo.

Heidi Otway: A hobo?

Dr. Sean Snaith: Yeah, I wasn’t riding the rails, but I was riding jet planes. And so the position I took upon graduating was at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. And so having told you about my background, I mean, I obviously wasn’t going on vacations or traveling as a kid growing up and during college. I played basketball, so even taking a trip on spring break wasn’t an option, not that I would’ve had the money to do so. And so this was sort of a fascinating opportunity for a kid from Pittsburgh that hadn’t seen the world beyond the incomplete set of encyclopedias I had in my room. And yeah, so I just sort of lept at that opportunity and just was a real fantastic experience. And as I told my students, as my time was ending there, I said, “I’ve learned far more than I’ve taught.”

Heidi Otway: What was a highlight of that experience for you?

Dr. Sean Snaith: It was just so much sensory, I don’t want to say overload, because I liked it. I mean, just being plopped down into Cairo, which is a sprawling, dusty city in a country that has history that makes our US history pale in comparison. And to just be suddenly plopped into the middle of that was just… I mean, every day it was like an adventure. I mean, it was like a fantasy camp or something. Like, “Oh, this is a job? I’m getting paid to be here, but yet I get to interact and see this part of the world and enjoy the cuisine and listen to people, their perspective on the US and on the world in general.” And it was just a tremendous education.

Heidi Otway: That sounds amazing. So where did you go when you left Cairo? Did you make your way to Florida there? Or did you go someplace else?

Dr. Sean Snaith: No. Well, a couple of stops there for Boxcar Willie before I [crosstalk 00:11:22]. I was married at the time, and so it was a bit difficult being that far away from family in Cairo. So you could come home to visit in the summertime, but certainly not holidays or anything like that. And we were fortunate enough to have a number of people come over and visit us and seize on that opportunity. But a former colleague from graduate school had contacted me, he was working at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. Yeah. So he knew I was working and living in sort of a developing country, and he just asked me how I liked it. And I said, “I loved it.” And then they were looking for someone to teach econometrics in their graduate program at the University of the West Indies. And I’m like, “Well, it’s a lot closer to the States.” The university actually has its own beach and I’m like, “Wow, okay.” This looks pretty dang good on paper.

Dr. Sean Snaith: And so yeah, I took that position. And generally a really good experience. I was only there for a year. Great, the students were fantastic, incredibly bright. This was the case in Cairo as well, quite frankly, and much more respectful than students in the United States seem to be. But Kingston’s kind of rough. They’ve got a real problem with crime. And so there were some brushes with that that kind of… I thought, “Well, this probably isn’t going to work out.” I think outside of Kingston, just a beautiful island. I mean, incredible geography. I mean, mountains, fantastic beaches and-

Heidi Otway: Yeah, I love Jamaica. I love visiting, yeah.

Dr. Sean Snaith: Yeah, and the food and the music. I mean, it’s just so much going for it. So from there I actually… The way academic hiring kind of functions, you interview in the fall for positions that begin a year later. So I kind of at that time, just started to look at positions outside of academia to sort of hasten my return to the US. And I took a position with a consulting firm in Boston, which I think turned out to be an important step in where my career ultimately led. And this was a company that we did forecasting and market sizing for basically all the major IT companies in the world. So IBM was a big client.

Heidi Otway: So what year was this that you actually were in Boston during this forecasting around tech?

Dr. Sean Snaith: This would’ve been ’99 and 2000.

Heidi Otway: Okay. Yeah, that was around Y2K.

Dr. Sean Snaith: Yeah, yeah, which, you know.

Heidi Otway: We thought the whole world was going to end.

Dr. Sean Snaith: Exactly. Well, I’m going down a sidebar here, but this is why we should not listen to experts 100%. We can take their opinions as part of the input, but experts should not be on top in my thinking, they should be on tap. Here’s some information, let’s use it and make our decision based on a total set of things beyond the expert’s opinion. But yeah, that was supposed to be the collapse of our digital world. And I think other than a burrito that misscanned in a 7-Eleven in Des Moines, there wasn’t too much fallout.

Heidi Otway: I was working in the media that day, and we decided to stay in the newsroom beyond midnight so that if anything broke we were ready to have breaking news on our news station to say, “Look what happened.”

Dr. Sean Snaith: Well, hopefully you ordered in some good food, and had a nice time chatting.

Heidi Otway: Right, right.

Dr. Sean Snaith: So, yeah, that was going on. And that was an issue in IT, but not really something that we were really focused on in that company. So this was a very hands on application of economics and economic analysis. And in a way that, in academia a lot of the research that you do really is for the eyes of other researchers, it’s not necessarily something that is widely disseminated or used by the private sector or government necessarily. So this was doing economic analysis and then presenting it to these major corporations that were using it as the basis for strategic planning and compensation, and so there was a lot riding on it in that sense.

Dr. Sean Snaith: So it was a good experience. And I learned a lot about sort of practical applications of my skills and did that for a couple of years. But again, my personality type, kind of being independent and wanted to do things I’m interested in isn’t amenable to a consulting firm where your allegiance is to the client and to do what the client needs done when the client needs it done. So I learned a lot, 20 hour days when projects were coming due. This was all a new experience. But yeah, I started to crave that independence and that freedom again, and after a couple of years in Boston I did go back on the job market and wanted to return to academia. And so I took a position at the University of North Dakota.

Heidi Otway: North Dakota?

Dr. Sean Snaith: Yeah. Yeah.

Heidi Otway: What is a guy from Pittsburgh doing in North Dakota?

Dr. Sean Snaith: Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you. I actually really enjoyed my time there. So the University of North Dakota is in Grand Forks, which is about 70 miles north of Fargo, which is where North Dakota State is. So it’s not too far from the Canadian border, and it gets cold there. I don’t know if you were aware, but-

Heidi Otway: Oh, I’ve heard, I’ve heard.

Dr. Sean Snaith: The coldest I experienced in the three years we were there was an ambient temperature of minus 54 degrees.

Heidi Otway: No, sir. That’s why we’re in Florida. That’s why we’re in Florida.

Dr. Sean Snaith: Well, I can’t imagine going back now. My blood is so thin I think I’d immediately die once the temperature dropped below 20. But I had to go out and experience that, so I bundled up and layered up and went out. And it was like a space walk, to be honest. What I would imagine a space walk would be. I mean, sound was different. Just really incredible. And yes, if you take a boiling cup of water and throw it in the air in those conditions, it does freeze before it reaches the ground. But the cold didn’t bother me as much, what they didn’t tell me about was the mosquitoes in the summer, which-

Heidi Otway: Worse than Florida?

Dr. Sean Snaith: Oh, oh, far worse.

Heidi Otway: Really?

Dr. Sean Snaith: In fact, when people complain about mosquitoes in Florida. I’d tell you, “Just go to Grand Forks in July, and then you’ll come back here and you won’t complain again.” Now swarming, not occasional bites.

Heidi Otway: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Dr. Sean Snaith: But beyond that a great experience. My daughter was born in Grand Forks, and it turns out she was actually delivered by the mayor of Grand Forks-

Heidi Otway: That’s interesting.

Dr. Sean Snaith: … who was an obstetrician. And my family said, “Oh, does he run the feed store too?” It was like some Green Acres scenario. They got a kick out of that-

Heidi Otway: That’s a great story.

Chris Cate: The Fluent in Floridian podcast is brought to you by SalterMitchell PR, a communications consultancy focused on helping good causes win. We provide strategic insight and guidance to organizations seeking to make an impact in the nation’s third most populous state. Learn more at SMPRFlorida.com. Now back to Heidi’s interview with Dr. Sean Snaith, the director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting.

Dr. Sean Snaith: When I was there, they had a research center in the economics department that had gone stagnant, it was the Bureau of Business and Economic Research. And I had worked to try to get that up and running. As I felt again, I had had this taste of sort of real world economics, and I thought we could be part of the conversation here when it comes to economic issues in that region. And so I tried for a couple of years to convince folks that this would something worth doing, and wasn’t making terrible progress with convincing folks. And I went to a conference and there was a Dean there looking to start up a forecasting center in California, and he had money. So after a couple years of trying to get some money to do this, here’s a dean with a couple bags full. And so we loaded up the truck and we moved to, well, not Beverly, but Stockton, California, which is in Northern California, it’s where the University of the Pacific is.

Dr. Sean Snaith: And so, I started a business forecasting center there and we had had really good success. It got a lot of visibility for Stockton. And we were competing with the UCLA Forecast Center, which was long established and nationally known. And so I found the perfect kind of thing to do. It was this blend of the real world and academia, and I was sort of straddling both. And so that kind of suited my academic schizophrenia just perfectly. And I ran into another Dean at another conference, this time from the University of Central Florida, and approached me about taking over the Institute here. And again, all our family’s on the East Coast, and the ocean in California is awful cold. A beautiful state, and I understand why people fall in love with it, but I’m an East Coaster. And so I had two young daughters at the time, so taking a job in Orlando-

Heidi Otway: Hey.

Dr. Sean Snaith: We were big into the princess phase then, so this was like moving to Mecca, I guess, as far as those kids were concerned. And yeah, so I took the job and I started the forecasting program at the Institute, the College of Business. Yeah, so there was funding in place, but at the time I came to Florida, this was not being done. I don’t know if at some point there was a university doing this, but sometimes it really depends on the dean and administration whether or not they see value in this type of activity. So this particular dean did, we get tremendous support from Orange County government here for the Institute. And it is just a very… I mean, Florida in general is of course is a major state, a growing state, an incredibly diverse state as far as the economy’s concerned, and Orlando’s sort of right in the middle of all that. And so it was really… Yeah, I’ve gotten lucky more times than I can count I think in my career, and this was an instance of luck as well, and just opportunity sort of presenting itself and being able to come here. And as I said, I kind of put down roots here after riding the rails all those years. And yeah, I enjoy it immensely.

Heidi Otway: So you’ve gone from Pittsburgh to overseas, to the Caribbean, to California, then to Florida and other little places in between, so now that you’ve been in Florida for so many years, how does it compare to other states that you may studied or other economies that you may have studied? How does Florida compare?

Dr. Sean Snaith: When you’re looking at a local or a regional economy, the industrial structure sort of determines pretty much everything when you are doing forecasting for the short term, three years, four years out, because an economy’s structure is not going to change very much in a short amount of time like that. And so when you look around the country you can understand where and why performance is varied among economies. And so having grown up in the Rust Belt you see that those structures heavily dependent at the time on manufacturing as manufacturing was increasingly going offshore, those cities and those regions suffered for a long time. Many still are suffering, some of them were able to make transitions, but those changes are typically glacial in nature.

Dr. Sean Snaith: And so for Pittsburgh, one of the major skyscrapers in the skyline there as I grew up was the US Steel building, which is one of the major steel companies there. That same building is now the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center building.

Heidi Otway: Interesting.

Dr. Sean Snaith: And so UPMC has become a major force in the economy. You have a lot of technology stuff tied into Carnegie Mellon University. And so it’s evolved, but it took decades to get there. Yeah, so I’m sort of reminded of that. And here in Orlando, in a state where tourism is such an important element of the economy, I find it interesting because sometimes you hear a lot of griping and moaning about the tourism sector and how wages in some of these jobs here tend to be lower wage. And I think, “Man, wouldn’t Youngstown, Ohio just kill to have the tourist industry that we have here, instead of sort of languishing as they have for decades.”

Dr. Sean Snaith: And so it’s an important element in Florida’s economy, and I think it always will be. I mean, the beaches are fantastic and varied around the state, and we’ve just got so many miles of them. The weather of course is fantastic, particularly in the winter. It’s a little rough wearing a suit here in August outside, but… I mean, that’s the price you pay for what we’re experiencing now. But it goes well beyond that. And I’ve watched in 15 years this state continue to grow jobs well outside the tourism sector. But, at the same time, of course, tourism continues to grow. So in some ways it obscures the progress that we’ve made in healthcare and professional business services.

Dr. Sean Snaith: But I think that the trends will likely continue. And I think we’re starting to see movement from states to Florida. One example very close to where I live here is, is Disney is relocating a significant number of employees. They’re building about a 60 acre campus.

Heidi Otway: And they’re coming from California.

Dr. Sean Snaith: They’re coming from California. Now they’ve announced that 2,000 jobs will move, I think that was just to keep the employees from freaking out. I suspect it’ll be a multiple of that when it’s all said and done. So things like that. And then in general, again, here, the Medical City. I mean, I’m in Orlando, so I’m talking about things that are right in my backyard, have all happened over the past 15 years.

Dr. Sean Snaith: And so other things, we’re hearing about hedge funds relocating to South Florida. So this is something that maybe wasn’t happening 10 or 15 years ago, but I think that the climate, again, whether we’re talking about weather or we’re talking about the business climate, I think fiscally the state is pretty well managed when you look at California or New York and Illinois. We’ve got the no income tax benefit, which having moved here directly from California, it was like a 9%, 10% pay raise right at the top. So, yeah, I think there’s definitely much more to come. I think the challenges that we face as a state are more sort of the economic equivalent of Osgood-Schlatter disease, which is-

Heidi Otway: Yeah, what is that?

Dr. Sean Snaith: Well, I had it. I’m 6’5″, and so when you grow very quickly you get these pains in your knees in particular from these growth pains. And so it’s growing pain is really what it is. And so that’s what we’re going through. And you could see it most in the housing market. I think inaffordability is an increasing issue. And really interconnected with this is our transportation network in Florida, these things, affordability of housing and transportation really go hand in hand. So these are the things that we’re going to have to, I think, put a lot of effort into as the state’s population and economy continues to grow.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, so what are you most excited about?

Dr. Sean Snaith: It’s this growth outside of tourism that to me is the most exciting. These jobs in healthcare and professional business services, these are good paying jobs. And there’s nothing wrong, having grown up as I did, a minimum wage job can make a huge difference in the livelihood of the household. And I started working, I think in fourth grade, probably for less than minimum wage, but that money, while it didn’t really change our plate, meant the difference between drinking powdered milk and buying real milk. And if you’ve had both you know that’s an upgrade. So I really don’t like to look down my nose, I think you need opportunities for everybody to work at all skill levels. Not everybody is going to work for SpaceX, including myself. And there’s no shame and there should be no stigma attached to lower paid, lesser-skilled jobs, because these are important to the workers and to their families.

Dr. Sean Snaith: But at the same time, getting more higher paid jobs in the state creates a ripple effect.

Heidi Otway: All right, well, thank you so much for sharing your journey to where you are today. And we always like to wrap up our interviews with a couple of questions about Florida that we ask every guest, and you’ve been here long enough, so I know you can answer these. So what person, place or thing in Florida deserves more attention than it’s currently getting?

Dr. Sean Snaith: What I don’t think they know about is the healthcare available here in Florida, from Jacksonville down to Miami. I don’t think they know about the professional business services sector and the job growth there and the good paying jobs that are available. Like I said, we need a new PR person. They hear about Florida Man, and they know about Disney and beaches.

Dr. Sean Snaith: But there is so much more to be had in the state.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. What is your favorite Florida place to visit?

Dr. Sean Snaith: Oh man, this could get me in some hot water, couldn’t it? I’m going to catch some heat from this, for who I omit. There’s a lot of great spots. I enjoy Amelia Island and Marco Island, so kind of two islands on opposite ends of the state. And there’s just, I mean, just fantastic places in between. I like going to Ocala, but… I mean, like I said, back to that, you drive from Pensacola down the length of the state, there’s all kinds of experiences here that I think most people are just completely unaware of.

Heidi Otway: So who is a Florida leader from the past or present who inspires you?

Dr. Sean Snaith: I’m going to go more local here, and not one person, because as I’ve said, I’ve been in Orlando for 15 years, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve sort of lost admiration for national politics and the people involved there. And as I sit in countless commission meetings and look at the long hours and never ending public comment that local officials sit through, and they make decisions quite frankly, that I have a far greater impact on the daily lives of the residents than your national representative. I mean, how representative really is this person of you and your day to day concerns?

Dr. Sean Snaith: So one of the things that struck me here was the ability… We’ve got Orange County and you’ve got a mayor and a council there, and then you’ve got the city of Orlando and the mayor and commission there as well. That’s different from a lot of states, usually the city government is sort of the larger government and the county is lesser, It’s kind of the polls are reversed here. But over the years the mayors that I’ve seen, Rich Crotty, Teresa Jacobs and now Jerry Demings in Orange County, and then during the whole time it’s been Buddy Dyer in the city of Orlando, they have worked together to do things that this cooperation has led to just incredible achievements here in our region. And I think they’re not always in the spotlight, but you’re doing the hard work that makes a difference in the lives of the people that live by. So I’ve been impressed and I do admire what these mayors and the councils under them have done in the 15 years since I’ve been here.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, we’ve had both of your mayors on the Fluent in Floridian Podcast, so I’ll make sure to send you the links so you can [crosstalk 00:44:31]-

Dr. Sean Snaith: Oh, okay. All right.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, they were great interviews. And then you mentioned earlier that you played basketball, so I’m just curious, what’s your favorite Florida sports team?

Dr. Sean Snaith: Well, UCF Knights. I mean, come on, I don’t want to lose my job here. Well, it’s funny because I played basketball for the Gators. And I tell people that, half the room seems to applaud in Florida, which always surprised me that there’s so many followers from a division three liberal arts college, the Allegheny College Gators is where I played. No, it’s great sports, that’s been another fantastic thing about UCF is seeing their programs kind of develop. And here we are playing the Florida Gators in the [inaudible 00:45:18]. So it’s a great collegiate state for sports, and the pro teams of course are making noise as well. So yeah, go Knights.

Heidi Otway: Okay, go Knights. Well, Dr. Snaith, thank you so much for being a guest on this Fluent in Floridian podcast. I know that our listeners are going to enjoy this conversation as much as I did, so thank you so much.

Dr. Sean Snaith: I hope so. I enjoyed it as well.

Chris Cate: Thank you for listening to the Fluent in Floridian podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter, with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell PR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communications, social media, advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchell PR at saltermitchellpr.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.