This column, written by LVEDC President & CEO Don Cunningham, originally appeared in The Morning Call and on the newspaper’s website on Dec. 27, 2024.
Most of life’s best gifts can’t be wrapped and placed under a tree. 
The presents that we seek and ask for often obscure the gifts that lie unnoticed in our midst. It’s human nature: We focus on what we don’t have and take for granted what we do.
As the holidays roll through, and we take stock of another year, there are boxes left unexplored in the Lehigh Valley.
Somehow, our quiet region, often overshadowed in our own state by Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, created more economic opportunity and output than three states: Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming.
The Gross Domestic Product of the Lehigh Valley broke records as its economy grew to $55.7 billion, an increase of 4 percent. The rate of growth here outpaced Pennsylvania, the Northeast, and the United States.
We still make things here, and manufacturing led the way.
Manufacturing output rose to $9 billion and makes up 16 percent of the Lehigh Valley’s economy. In comparison, manufacturing is 12 percent of the American economy.
During the last 10 years, the economic output of the Lehigh Valley has grown from $34 billion to more than $55 billion. That’s happened with both Democrats and Republicans in the White House, during global pandemics, attempted insurrections, and increased inflation.
Like a little engine that could, the people and companies of the Lehigh Valley kept their collective head down, ignored distractions, and fueled a fire to climb a mountain. As the prayer goes, we had the serenity to accept the things we couldn’t change and the courage to change the things we could.
All politics may now be national. But the renaissance and success of a region is still local.
Economic numbers are only representations of what really matters. The true gift is what is created for people who live here. Employment, wages, household income are up. Quality of life has grown, and poverty declined.
Employment is at its historic height in the Lehigh Valley, with 339,145 jobs in the market. Unemployment is at the region’s longest sustained low except for the early months of the pandemic.
The best social program remains a job — and without economic opportunity not much else matters.
The region’s median household income has increased by $17,000 during the last five years and is now $81,709, according to the latest Census data.
Recent inflation cut into those household gains, but income growth outpaced the rate of inflation during that five-year period. Without it, there would’ve been much more pain, and far fewer gifts under the tree.
Possibly, the most important present in the Lehigh Valley is that the region’s poverty rate is in decline. The best rate would be zero percent but the current rate of 10.5% is a decrease of about 0.5% from five years before — and, more significantly, it’s unchanged since 2010, a period of more 13 years.
It’s a thousand little decisions and actions that create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity. They happen both in public and private, sometime in the face of adversity and opposition and sometime in the solitude of an office, a classroom, or a board room.
One of those gifts came from the Bethlehem City Council. Faced with a technology company leaving the city, they were asked to allow a 48,000-square-foot technology and manufacturing building constructed 30 years ago on former Bethlehem Steel land to be torn down and replaced with high-end apartments.
They were told repeatedly the building was too old and outdated to support modern manufacturing. By unanimous vote, they bet on economic opportunity and keeping the building.
A German pharmaceutical technology company, GfM Bremen, purchased the building this month for its American headquarters and a life sciences and pharmaceutical manufacturing operation. After completing renovations, they will bring new high-skilled jobs to the Lehigh Valley in 2025.
Our perpetual yearning for what could be and longing for what has been often camouflages what has happened.
Often, what is asked for are not the gifts that we need. I learned that when I was 14. That Christmas I asked for a BB gun. My dad complied. At that age, Santa had retired from visiting our house.
One day a buddy and I went out shooting birds in the woods behind our neighborhood in Bethlehem Township. Being 14 and male, I thought it would be funny to pump a BB into his puffy winter jacket while he took aim at a bird.
I failed to realize that there was a gap of exposed tender skin between the bottom of his ill-fitting jacket and his jeans. That’s where the BB hit, angering him greatly.
He turned, chased me down and pumped a BB through my nose, missing my eye by less than an inch. I rode my bike to the doctor in Miller Heights while blood poured from my face.
Losing that eye would’ve changed my life, and maybe his. I was very lucky.
We’re not always prepared for the gifts we seek. And the greatest gifts we often receive in life don’t come wrapped in a present under a tree.