Category: unemployment

Exurban living can exacerbate joblessness, study finds

The general belief that people living in American suburbs are better off economically than those in cities has been shaken in recent years, as desirable downtown neighborhoods have risen in price and have pushed poverty out into first- and second-ring suburbs. Here’s another crack in that once monolithic belief.

Writer F. Kaid Benfield reports in Huffington Post on a new U.S. Census study that found recently laid-off workers who live far from job centers take longer to find replacement employment than do residents of neighborhoods more convenient to jobs by public transit or car.

The study itself is from the US Census bureau. Read it here. 

Benfield, who writes for the Natural Resources Defense Council, explains how exurban living can hurt, not help, household and government financial health:

“More hidden [than the problems of auto emissions contributing to carbon emissions], though, are the economic consequences of sprawl, such as rising costs for the construction and maintenance of extended infrastructure and the burdens of increased transportation costs on household budgets.

“More hidden still are the economic consequences of households being located at long distances, inadequately served by public transit, from job centers. For the employed, it means longer and more inconvenient commutes. But, for the unemployed, in too many cases it means you can’t get to the job you need at all because you can’t afford the costs of car ownership and inadequate public transit simply doesn’t connect you to where you need to go.”

Fact many Americans are unaware of: For the average U.S. household, the second-biggest chunk of the household budget, after housing, is not health care or food. It’s transportation.

Benfield links to an article in The Economist about the jobs-housing spatial mismatch, which notes: “The typical American city dweller can reach just 30 percent of jobs in their city within 90 minutes on public transport. That is a recipe for unemployment.”

Read Benfield’s full article here.

 

Weathering the downturn – or not?

For decades Charlotte was known as the metro region that simply shed recessions like water off a duck’s back. But will the current downturn belie that reputation? That’s the key question being explored today at a conference today that has drawn several dozen experts in regional resilience to Charlotte’s Duke Mansion.

Obviously the answer to that can’t be known just yet. But some interesting information has come out, particularly during a panel discussion I served on this morning. The group that came to Charlotte is the MacArthur Network on Building Resilient Regions, which has studied metro regions for years. They look at how metro regions react to major economic shocks. Are they resistent? Or do they bounce back, i.e., are they resilient? Or re they non-resistent? They studied the Charlotte region’s response to previous economic downturns – finding the region either resistant or resilient. But their study ended before 2007. They haven’t been back, and they wanted to get caught up on the situation here since the banking crisis.

One key stat we talked about: The metro region’s (that is, the MSA’s) percentage for employment in banking and finance is virtually unchanged now from what it was pre-2008. Another: The manufacturing sector in the region has gone from one-third of the employment in 1980 to, by 2005, less than 10 percent.

Another, from panelist John Connaughton, a UNC Charlotte economist: Since the downturn began, the U.S. has regained 40 percent of the jobs lost. North Carolina has regained only 25 percent of its lost jobs. The Charlotte MSA has regained 50 percent of its lost jobs. But, he pointed out, what Charlotte lost, when it lost the Wachovia headquarters when that bank was bought by Wells Fargo, was some high-paying jobs. The real issue, he said, is the loss of blue-collar jobs: manufacturing and construction jobs.

“Charlotte is a very diverse economy,” he said. He predicted the metro region will spring back. “It will be the star that it was,” he said.

The panel also talked, predictably, about the need for education. I mentioned the region’s history in the past centuries of not valuing education, especially for low-income farm- and mill-workers. And this region remains comparatively poor in post-baccalaureate education and research universities. UNCC is on the road to creating a reputation for research, but as Hal Wolman, director of the George Washington Institute of Public Policy conceded, it does not now have a national reputation for research.

If cities are made more resilient to downturns by having strong education, government and health sectors, then Charlotte may be at risk. One out of three may not be enough.

If I’m nuts, then Joe Nocera is too

I couldn’t help but laugh when I read New York Times’ op-ed columnist Joe Nocera’s piece on Monday, “What Is Business Waiting For?”  In it he suggests that U.S. business leaders should consider hiring more people because that, in the end, will help the economy and thus, their business. “If enough companies started hiring — while wrapping their actions in the mantle of patriotism — even Carl Icahn might have trouble complaining about it,” Nocera writes.

I proposed a similar idea deep in a column I wrote last December for The Charlotte Observer, “Is the U.S. entering a ‘hate the rich’ era?”

I wrote: “If you’re a ‘rich person,’ especially if you run a company, should you be worried? Who knows? The wealthy still seem to have Congress in their pocket. But maybe now is the time to start heading off rising animosity. I know that some wealthy people truly do care about their country and their community. So prove it: CEOs could decide it’s an act of patriotism to start hiring workers. Why not challenge fellow CEOs to a patriotic campaign to fill jobs, akin to Warren Buffet’s push to get billionaires to give half their wealth to charity?” 

The commentariat, both online and in my email inbox, beat me up severely for saying I hated the rich – even though I specifically said I didn’t – and for being so ignorant about business as to suggest such a dumb thing. Maybe I was just too far ahead of the curve?

And speaking of hostility toward the rich, check out Pulitzer-winning Steven Pearlstein’s “Blame for financial mess starts with the corporate lobby” from the Aug. 13 Washington Post. It’s blistering.

20 cities to avoid – or not?

CNBC.com has put together an interesting slide show of 20 cities you don’t want to live in … yet.
With each are a few paragraphs about that city’s problems and its good points, too. Not surprisingly, Detroit tops the list. Flint, Mich., is on there, too. And Fresno and Stockton, Calif., as well as Jackson, Miss., Little Rock, Ark., and Birmingham, Ala.

But I started looking at the unemployment rates listed with each of the so-called loser cities – and I don’t think they’re loser cities, but certainly troubled ones in many cases. The Charlotte regional jobless rate tops those of Cleveland, Buffalo, St. Louis, and possibly even Detroit. The blurb just said Detroit is “above 10 percent.” As is this region’s jobless rate: 10.7 percent in February. Mecklenburg’s rate in February was 10.2 percent. Hmmm – unemployment worse than Detroit? That would not be a Charlotte Chamber slogan you’ll be seeing anytime soon. Though it does portend sinking pay and desperate workers, which might attract some jobs …

Seriously, it’s a quick and interesting snapshot – based on someone’s set of criteria – of some cities. As the article quotes Bert Sperling of BestPlaces.net saying, in many cases young urban pioneers are moving back into the distressed cities such as Detroit, Cleveland and New Orleans, attracted by the housing prices and urban opportunities.

(Naked City is taking another long weekend break. I’ll be speaking Thursday in Beaufort, S.C., at 6:30 p.m. at the Technical College of the Lowcountry, 921 Ribault Road. The lecture’s free and open to the public so if you’re in that neighborhood, come on by. Sponsors are the Beaufort chapter of CNU Carolinas, the City of Beaufort, and Brown Design Studio.)