Latin America houses 22 of the 300 largest metropolitan economies in the world. Together, these cities and their surrounding areas—ranging from 21 million-person Mexico City to 2.5 million-person San Juan—account for 30 percent of Latin America’s population and 40 percent of its economic output. On average, they are the most productive parts of the region and the wealthiest as a result.

For all that, however, these places are growing slower than cities in other parts of the world. Figure 1 shows that employment grew by 1.2 percent in Latin American metro areas, slower than both developing metro areas (1.7 percent) and the world’s 300 largest metro economies overall (1.5 percent).

While employment creation was tepid, GDP per capita growth actually contracted by 0.3 percent, the only global region to experience a decline. This drop looks even starker compared to average GDP per capita growth in developing metro areas (4.0 percent).

Slower employment and GDP per capita growth in Brazilian cities, which account for half the Latin American metro areas in the report, dragged down the performance of the region as a whole.

Jobs grew at a rate of 0.8 percent and GDP per capita declined by 0.9 percent, despite the stimulus associated with the World Cup. Indeed, the construction sector created jobs at the fastest rate in 2014 in Brazil’s cities, and Rio de Janeiro, a major World Cup host and the site of the 2016 Olympics, was the best performing Brazilian metro area.

However, this building boom failed to counteract a floundering commodities sector, as well as poorly performing manufacturing and business and financial services sectors. As a result, four Brazilian metro areas landed among the 60 slowest growing metro economies in the world: Campinas, Porto Alegre, São Paulo, and Salvador.