Large Metros Have Generated the Lion's Share of Employment Since the Great Recession - CityLab

Even though some live within the fantasy that Lake Worth exists solely in and of itself, independent of any other city, we are part of a metropolitan area of almost 6 million people. Click title for a link to an article that equates economic and job growth after the recession to the size of a metropolitan area. Larger, more dense ones are performing better economically. The embedded link above confirms this so far this decade, at least in terms of population growth. From the article:

More recently, the pattern may have returned to more normal conditions that seem to favor large metros. “[G]ood economic things—agglomeration effects, knowledge spillovers, clustering, etc.—happen in certain locations, which are usually bigger cities,” Lehner adds.
Larger metros, it seems, are the main beneficiaries from the ongoing clustering of talent, industry and investment that are part and parcel of our increasingly spiky and unequal geography.

I think that the more that we realize we are part of the regional economy, we will do better with job and investment creation locally in Lake Worth.