Tri-Cities metro areas turned in some strong seasonally adjusted retail sales tax collections numbers in August.

The three-county Johnson City Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) comprising Washington, Sullivan and Unicoi counties led Northeast Tennessee led the three other NE Tenn. metro areas on the year-over-year metric and was a close second to Morristown for the strongest month-over-month performance.

And the four-county Kingsport-Bristol MSA comprising Hawkins and Sullivan counties in NE Tenn. and Washington counties in SW Va. wasn’t farm behind Johnson City.

Here’s how the region’s metro areas looked compared to August last year.

Johnson City MSA, up 6.3%.

Kingsport-Bristol, up 6.1%.

Knoxville, up 5.7%.

Morristown, up 4.1%.

Statewide, collections were strongest in the Cleveland MSA (up 8.4%), followed by Nashville, MSA (up 7.7%) and Clarksville (up 7.3%). The Chattanooga MSA had the same performance level as Johnson City (up 6.3%)

When compared to July’s collections:

Morristown MSA was up 7%

Johnson City MSA was up 6.8%.

Kingsport-Bristol was up 6.5%.

Knoxville was up 5.3%.

Statewide collections were up 6.7%.

Cleveland MSA has the strongest month-over-month performance among Tennessee’s 10 MSA with an increase of 9%.

So far this year, seasonally adjusted sales tax collections are running 4.2% better than the first eight months of last year.

Johnson City and Knoxville share second-place behind the Morristown MSA for the region’s strongest year-to-date collections performance. Kingsport-Bristol hasn’t been able the get its collections into positive territory in the year-to-date metric. Last year was a strong year for Kingsport-Bristol, but it hasn’t been able to sustain that collections performance this year.

Knoxville’s market share performance continued to outperform the region’s other metro areas in August.

Categories: ECONOMY