Creative Class

Last Friday, my list of the 20 metros with the fastest-growing jobs was posted over at The Daily Beast. Jobs are the second-biggest issue facing the United States – second only to the economy, according to a recent Gallup poll – and a pending referendum on the Obama administration in the upcoming mid-term elections. As I noted:

The United States has lost an estimated 7.4 million jobs since the onset of the economic crisis. But, the economy is on track to create some 15.3 million new jobs looking out to 2018, according to projections done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). And more than 50 million total jobs will come open, as older workers retire and many switch jobs and careers. Total U.S. employment is projected to grow by 10.1 percent over the period, according to the BLS forecast, considerably better than the 7.4 percent growth rate for previous decade (1998-2008), and roughly in line with population growth of 10.7 percent.

But where will the new jobs be located? Which places will grow the most jobs and, conversely, which will see the biggest job losses?

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Here’s some video from my CNBC StreetSigns appearance with Robert Shiller.

Check out my new piece in The New Republic:

Speaking at a health care reform rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, in July 2009, President Obama declared that the worst of the recession was over. “We have stopped the free-fall. The market is up and the financial system is no longer on the verge of collapse,” he said proudly.

A year or so later, with midterm elections looming and an electorate that is as fearful and angry as any in memory, the stock market has risen, but even a breath of bad news can send it tumbling. As dismal as housing prices continue to be, they have yet to hit bottom in some places. Unemployment remains frozen at an overall level of nine-plus percent, and job creation has been anemic. If the crisis belonged to George W. Bush, the recovery has been Obama’s—and it has been a fragile and tentative one at best. Along with billions of dollars in stimulus payments, the president has spent down most of his political capital. So what is his next step?

Read the full article here.

Nashville is the Silicon Valley of the music industry – a concentrated cluster of musical talent,  venues, studios and all the inputs required to make music.  So it’s no surprise the city take the music business seriously.  In May 2009, the mayor launched a Music Business Council (h/t: Ian Swain -my MPI colleague, music project collaborator and DJ).  To signal the initiative’s importance, he sits on the council whose members not only include label execs and entertainment lawyers, but also musicians like Emmylou Harris and Jack White. The Council’s goals extend all the way from supporting and expanding the presence of music festivals in Nashville to aiming to develop the best music education program of any public school system in the world.

My latest columns:

More and more economic experts are saying the U.S. economy is headed for a “double-dip” recession. But actually it’s much more – and much more serious than that. Earlier this week, Paul Krugman speculated that the U.S. is headed for a Third Great Depression, noting that while recessions are relatively common and depressions quite rare, he fears our current economic circumstance is coming to look more like the Great Depression of the 1930s or the Long Depression of the late 19th century.

The first chart below from David Leonhardt of The New York Times shows the recent downturn in private-sector unemployment.

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Check out this chart (via Calculated Risk) based on the newly released Case-Shiller Home Price Index. The Index was up in April. But what I find most interesting is how much cities and regions vary in the way they were hit by the housing bubble and subsequent collapse. The numbers speak for themselves.

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Long-established trends in the growth and decline of  America’s cities appear to be shifting according to new Census data released Tuesday. The data cover population trends for cities – that is, incorporated areas – from 2000 to 2009, and also for the immediate post-economic crisis period spanning July 2008 to July 2009.

Some major cities, which had long seen population decline, registered population gains. Chicago, for example, saw its population increase by 0.8 percent, its fastest pace of the decade, while New York expanded 0.5 percent, continuing gains in recent years. Other cities, notably many Sunbelt cities that had long seen rapid growth, saw their gains slow considerably for the first time in modern memory.

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The Case-Shiller Home Price Index projects slow growth in house prices for the next four years or so. The chart below (via The Wall Street Journal) tracks the Case-Shiller Index from 2000 through 2014.

After a slight uptick, the index is projected to decline again by about 1.4 percent this year. The cumulative increase for the next five years is projected to be 10.5 percent – or about 2 percent a year. This will make up about a third of the total loss (28 percent) from peak housing values in 2006.

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My interview with the New York Post’s Brian Moore.

To Richard Florida, calling today’s economic woes the “Great Recession” doesn’t begin to describe the tectonic forces at work. This is not simply a time when jobs are hard to find, says the urban theorist and best-selling author, who also runs the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s management school. Unlike previous downturns, such as the ones that kicked off the previous three decades, he believes today’s recession is a “great reset” that will fundamentally change the work we do and the way we do it.

“Great resets are mechanisms by which technologies change, productivities improve,” says Florida, whose latest book — titled, yes, “The Great Reset” — describes current and past transformations in American society. “But most important, they’re shifts in the way we live and work.”

Read the full piece here.