Economics

Mobility on the Decline

Faced with an economic downturn and a bursting real estate bubble, Americans look to be staying put in greater numbers. According to Ball State demographer Michael Hicks, interviewed in an article examining the trend in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Property values have dropped so much, people can't pick up and move the way they used to."  read more »

Report on the Jobless Recovery: 18.7% Effective Unemployment Rate in May

Is the recent talk of "green shoots" coming out of this recession realistic? A recent report from the New America Foundation outlines the strong likelihood of a jobless recession that "could perpetuate the crises in the housing and banking sectors and prevent a sustainable and healthy economic recovery." A jobless recovery will prevent the wage growth necessary to stimulate business investment, maintain consumption, and pay down debt.  read more »

The Best Places to Avoid a Recession

Would you like to avoid recessions altogether?

You can come close if you live in the right place.

This report looks at the period January 1991 through April 2009 – a period of 220 months that includes three recessions. Since employment rises and falls monthly because of seasonal trends (school year, holiday retail and more), this report uses 12-month employment growth rates as the measurement criteria – the employment in a given month compared to the employment 12 months earlier. This eliminates seasonality and allows us to compare, if you will, apples with apples.  read more »

A Look at the Information Sector

Between economic development strategies targeting software firms, the deflation of the tech bubble, talk of "broadband," and recent consternation about failing publishing business models, we seem to hear a lot about the information sector. Recognizing that, it's interesting that the information sector only comprises about 2.2% of total employment in the US.

On top of that, after a big decline since the tech bubble peak in 2001, in February the sector has receded to just more than 2.9 million jobs, a level not seen since April 1996.  read more »

Visualizing our 2009 Best Cities for Job Growth Rankings

Here's some great maps of our annual Best Cities Rankings created by Robert Morton at Tableau Software. Robert used their software tool to plot a color coded point for each city in the rankings by size group, and immediate geographic patterns emerge:  read more »

What About Carmen?

The national conversation in the wake of President Obama's introduction of a mortgage relief plan has centered on "fairness" and the conditions to qualify for a mortgage modification. This misses the point. The effects of "innovative" mortgage products were felt far more broadly than the relationship between a single buyer (responsible or not) and his particular mortgage broker (despicable or not). To illustrate the point, meet Mrs. Conservative And Responsible Mortgage Neighbor ("Carmen" for short).  read more »

Is Texas Really on the Brink?

I recently recieved this this link to a short essay and some stats titled "Texas on the Brink". I thought I'd share my response with you:  read more »

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Deconstructing the Meltdown, National Job Losses by Sector

Here's a look at national employment change in the United States over the past 10 years. Nonfarm employment peaked in the US in December of 2007 at 138.1 million jobs. After a record loss of 598,000 jobs in the last month, we're now at 134.5 million. Thats a loss of more than 3.5 million jobs over the past year. Conveniently, 3.5 million jobs is exactly what Obama administration economists plan to create or save with the stimulus package.  read more »

The U.S. is Inherently Prosperous

Obama’s $800 billion stimulus bill has both policy makers and the public wondering what the bill will actually manage to stimulate. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, a recent study shows that left to fend for itself, the United States is inherently prosperous.

The Legatum Prosperity Index recently released a study of the most prosperous nations, measuring economic growth and quality of life. The study found that the U.S. – despite its current economic situation – ranks fourth out of 104 nations.  read more »

State Budget Woes

A new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities highlights the increasingly precarious fiscal situation faced by state governments confronting the ongoing economic downturn. According to CBPP, "at least 44 states faced or are facing shortfalls in their budgets for this and/or next year, and severe fiscal problems are highly likely to continue into the following year as well."  read more »

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