jobs

Feudal Future Podcast: Industrial A.I.

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 11:38:14 -0400

On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by robotics engineer, Wyatt Newman, and executive director of the Digital Twins Institute, Michael Grieves, to discuss industrial artificial intelligence.

WATCH THE EPISODE:

DOWNLOAD OUR NEWEST REPORT HERE:
Housing Report: Blame Ourselves, Not Our Stars

This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Find more Feudal Future Podcast episodes at joelkotkin.com

March 24th Event: The Next California Migration

New Geography — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 18:27:10 -0400

California poses many challenges for the middle- and working-class. As a result, there is a significant migration of people, jobs, and opportunities— both within and outside the state.

Who is leaving California, and who is no longer seeking to move to the golden state? Are there incentives for job creation and how can the state remain competitive?

Join Joel Kotkin, alongside Jorge De la Roca, and Marshall Toplansky as we tackle these questions and more. This expert panel will offer an overview of current demographic trends in California, followed by a discussion around future implications for the state and possible solutions to reinvigorate the California dream. The event will conclude with audience Q&A.

Date: Thursday, March 24, 2022
Time: 10:00AM - 10:45AM Pacific

Click here to RSVP for the webinar (registration is free).

WSDOT Secretary Consults with Political Advocates on Response to WPC Study, Has No Real Dispute With Our Data

Mariya Frost — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 19:20:23 -0400

In 2019, Washington Policy Center asked national transportation expert Wendell Cox to evaluate transportation planning in the Puget Sound region. He looked at data showing where people choose to live, where they choose to work, and how they choose to travel. Specifically, he addressed the policy question: does our regional transportation plan reflect reality or wishful thinking?

Key Points about the report and WSDOT's drafted response:

A 2019 WPC study by Wendell Cox found that public transit has little potential to serve employment destinations outside of downtown Seattle.
The study emphasized that transportation planning should focus on access to jobs.
WPC asked for feedback from the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) on the study, but never heard back.
Through public disclosure, WPC found WSDOT had drafted a response but never sent an official response.
WSDOT’s complaints are largely around methodology and authorship, without any real dispute with our data.
A thoughtful and data-focused reply should have been compiled and sent, which would have contributed to the public’s understanding of transportation policy and spending.

A brief excerpt follows:

"Lastly, Secretary Millar stoops to ad hominem attacks, stating that Cox is a “proponent of auto-centric development” so it’s not surprising that the study “downplays the positive contributions that transit and other options have on congestion mitigation.” On the contrary, Cox is a demographer and national urban policy expert whose values have been readily published online in an invited European journal essay and on Demographia’s website as follows: “The objective of urban policy should be to achieve widespread affluence and eradicate poverty” and that this “requires transport that maximizes mobility and minimizes travel times."

Read the full Policy Note here (PDF opens in new tab or window).

This article is reprinted with permission from Washington Policy Center.

Mariya Frost is the Director of the Coles Center for Transportation at Washington Policy Center. Mariya has lived in both Eastern and Western Washington, and believes strongly in the freedom of mobility for all Washingtonians. She is on the Board of Directors for the Eastside Transportation Association, a member of the Jim MacIsaac Research Committee, and a member of the Women of Washington civic group. She and her husband live in Tacoma.

Heartland of Opportunity Report

Heartland Forward — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 12:05:01 -0400

Heartland Forward's newest report is all about "opportunity occupations," jobs that offer middle-class wages but do not require a four-year degree. The report shows that opportunity occupations make up a significant share of the jobs available in both non-metro and metro regions in the Heartland—more so than non-Heartland comparison states like California or Florida. These jobs provide a pathway to revitalizing the middle class.

Learn more in the latest report from Heartland Forward: Heartland of Opportunity Report

Downtown Employment Estimates

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 11:00:13 -0400

Robert Manduca, who made an extremely detailed map of job locations in the US back in 2014, recently published a paper with estimates for central business district employment for US metropolitan and micropolitan areas.

Manduca utilizes an algorithm to delineate CBDs as areas of contiguous job density. This creates a standardized calculation of downtowns that allows comparisons across regions. This is very useful because there is no standardized definition of downtowns.

You can download a spreadsheet with summary information about every MSA. In some cases, the largest employment area is suburban, so you’ll see the CBD classified as “suburb” in this case. (The spreadsheet is of the largest employment center in each metro).

Read the rest at Heartland Intelligence.

3 Reasons COVID-19 is Creating a Rural Employment Crisis

Aidan Calvelli — Tue, 05 May 2020 13:01:50 -0400

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a health crisis unlike anything we’ve ever seen. But the disease’s damage doesn’t stop there. With millions of people forced to stay at home, the economy has cratered. 701,000 people lost their job in March alone—the worst month for American jobs since the Great Recession in March 2009.

At CORI, we knew there was an economic crisis happening in rural America even before this crash. Small town industries have been declining, tech jobs have boomed only in cities, and young people have left their rural hometowns in search of opportunity. And without good access to broadband, rural areas haven’t been able to tap into the digital economy’s growth.

All those existing challenges made us worried about what could happen when a COVID-related recession hit. Led by our in-house economist Mark Rembert, we created an Employment Risk Index, which ranks counties by how vulnerable they are to losing jobs based on three factors relevant to the COVID crisis: employment in high-risk industries, employment in small businesses, and age of workforce. What we found was troubling: Rural America faces a disproportionately high employment risk.

20th century industries are hardest hit

Our analysis found four industries at highest risk from COVID-19, whether through decreased demand or an inability to employ remote work: tourism, manufacturing, transportation, and natural resource production. In metro areas, these industries make up just 43 percent of all jobs. In rural areas, they represent an astonishing 56 percent.

View the geographical data and read the rest of this article at Center on Rural Innovation (CORI).

Reprinted with permission from American Geographical Society ags@americangeo.org

Aidan Calvelli is Research and Communications Analyst at CORI. He has edited books and articles about democracy and the presidency that have been featured by national news outlets and publishers. Aidan grew up in Rochester, NY and Shelburne, VT, and holds an A.B. in Political Theory from Brown University.

Google Chooses Mississippi

Wendell Cox — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 12:30:25 -0500

The Memphis Commercial Appeal has reported that Google will open its first US operations center in the northeast Mississippi. This area includes the suburbs and exurbs of the Memphis, TN-MS-AR metropolitan area.

Troy Dickerson, vice president of the Google Operations Center told WREG Channel 3 News: “We are excited to continue growing our workforce across the southeast and are confident that Mississippi will be a great home for Google,” “This operations center will give us the opportunity to hire amazing local talent as we expand in the region.”

Mississippi US Senator Roger Wicker told WREG Channel 3 News that “Google’s decision to locate more than 350 jobs and their first U.S. Operations Center in Mississippi is a testament to our state’s great workers and pro-growth policies, I am glad to welcome one of the most innovative companies in the world to northwestern Mississippi.”

AEI Rates Bay Area STEM Among the Worst

Wendell Cox — Tue, 14 May 2019 15:30:28 -0400

A new report by Edward Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which rates the “Ten Best and Worst Metro Areas to Live in for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Jobs,” comes to some apparently surprising conclusions (full report). Pinto, Co-director of the AEI Center on Housing Markets and Finance considers the 30 metropolitan areas with the most STEM jobs, and considers three factors, (1) the number of STEM jobs, (2) job growth since 1990 and (3) relative housing affordability for first time home buyers. Job growth is included as a measure of economic vibrancy. Pinto explains the inclusion of housing affordability.

On one hand, some metro areas with relatively high home prices are desirable places to live in terms of jobs and local amenities. On the other hand, house prices may be higher than they really need to be due to local policies that needlessly drive up the price of land and thereby constrain the amount of new housing. Households should be aware of these tradeoffs.

All of the top four metropolitan areas are in the South, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta and Austin. Chicago, with superior housing affordability, ranks unusually high at number five. Four of the bottom five are in California, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and fifth worst San Jose, the historic world leader in technology. Baltimore ranks fourth worst. Just outside the bottom five is tech leader San Francisco, at sixth worst.

The map below summarizes the rankings (see map below, used by permission).

Please continue reading the AEI findings here (full report).

Why Young Talent Is Leaving Silicon Valley

Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox — Thu, 03 May 2018 10:08:48 -0400

Perhaps no region in the world is more associated with talent than the once-booming San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. In the first four years of the decade, the area netted an average of 10,000 domestic migrants annually. But by 2016, the tide had turned. About 12,000 residents fled San Francisco that year, and the net outflow for 2017 climbed to 25,000. Nor is the future prognosis particularly great. Seventy-four percent of millennials in the Bay Area are currently considering an exit, according to the Urban Land Institute.

No surprise. San Francisco has devolved in recent years, with streets in some areas marred by the presence of homeless people, excrement and needles. Yet, housing prices are such that the California Association of Realtors now suggests a $181,000 income is necessary to purchase a home, more than 3.5 times the national average.

Expect Bay Area prices to rise further— even if Valley economic expansion continues to slow due to planning policies that block the peripheral growth required to improve affordability. Meanwhile, the outflow of households from the Bay Area could be accelerated by the new federal income tax provisions.

To date, the Bay Area’s job market has survived largely by hiring foreign workers; immigrants account for virtually all the region’s population growth. Many of these are essentially indentured servants on H-1B visas; the Bay Area accounts for a disproportionate share of these contract laborers and depends on non-citizens almost twice as much as other tech-oriented metropolitan areas. If the Trump administration follows through on promises to cut this program, the Bay Area may face even greater talent challenges in the years ahead

The complete listing for the Best and Worst States for Business can be found here.

This piece originally appeared on Chief Executive.

Good News for Detroit: Truck Production Transfer from Mexico

Wendell Cox — Sat, 13 Jan 2018 14:03:39 -0500

The Wall Street Journal reports good news for Detroit, with a somewhat rare expansion of production in Detroit (specifically in Warren, suburban Macomb County). Fiat Chrysler will be moving some of its truck production to Warren from a plant in Saltillo, Mexico, creating 2,500 new jobs. The Detroit move is to be contrasted with the near monopoly that Southern states have enjoyed in attracting vehicle manufacturing by foreign suppliers.

Just within the last few days, Toyota and Mazda have announced a major new manufacturing plant to be located in Huntsville, creating 4,000 jobs. For Toyota, this will be its second assembly plants in Alabama. Alabama has become a major auto manufacturing center, having previously attracted Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai assembly plant. The Toyota-Mazda venture involved a competition among 15 states, from Texas to North Carolina and Michigan.