This Staff Blog post presents the estimates of the economic contribution of the Mississippi and Alabama seafood industry by sector and type of contributions in 2020. The different sectors of the seafood industry included are seafood harvesting, processing, wholesaling, importing and retailing. The types of economic contribution included are sales, job, income and value-added.
Components of seafood industry
Commercial harvesting corresponds to economic sectors 114111 or “finfish fishing” and 114112 or “shellfish fishing” in the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).
Types of economic contributions
The income, the total value-added and sales impacts are expressed in dollars.
Employment impacts are expressed in terms of a mix of both full-time and part-time jobs.
The total economic impact is the sum of direct, indirect and induced impacts. Indirect impacts result from changes in the economic activity of other industrial sectors that supply goods or services to the sector being evaluated. Induced impacts are the result of personal consumption expenditures by industry employees.
Seafood industry economic contributions in Mississippi
Table 1 shows the NOAA Fisheries estimates of the total economic contributions of the entire Mississippi seafood industry by sector and type in 2020.
- Commercial harvesting contributed $83 million, which was 24% of total sales contribution.
- The seafood-processing sector added sales of $108 million (31% of the total sales contributions). Seafood imports added $3 million (1% of the total sales contribution).
- Seafood wholesaling produced sales of $14 million (4% of the total sales contribution).
- Seafood retailing generated $139 million in sales (40% of the total sales contribution).
In 2020, the entire Mississippi seafood industry contributed a total of $347 million in sales to the state economy, created 6,460 jobs, generated total personal income of $63 million and added $204 million in value-added to the state gross regional product.
Seafood industry economic contributions in Alabama
NOAA Fisheries estimates of the total economic contributions of the entire Alabama seafood industry by sector and type in 2020 are shown in Table 2.
- Commercial harvesting contributed $110 million (20% of total sales contribution).
- The seafood-processing sector added sales of $144 million (26 percent of the total sales contributions).
- Seafood imports added $7 million (1% of the total sales contribution).
- Seafood wholesaling produced sales of $14 million (2% of the total sales contribution).
- Seafood retailing generated $290 million in sales (52% of the total sales contribution).
In 2020, the entire Alabama seafood industry contributed a total of $560 million in sales to the state economy, created 11,476 jobs, generated total personal income of $223 million and added $292 million in value-added to the state gross regional product.
Impacts of the global pandemic
The impacts of the global pandemic on the seafood industry seemed to have differed significantly in the two states.
Compared to the 2019 values, the Mississippi seafood industry economic contribution significantly shrunk by 13.3% in sales and 13.9% in number of jobs.
On the other hand, the Alabama seafood industry economic contributions significantly expanded by 13.1% in sales and 14.1% in number of jobs in 2020 as compared to 2019.
Meet the author
Benedict C. Posadas, Ph.D.
Extension Research Professor of Economics
Since 1990, Ben Posadas has consistently developed and maintained the Mississippi State University Coastal Research and Extension Center’s (CREC) extension and research program in economics with... Read more
Phone: 228-546-1024
Email: [email protected]