In Many Cities, Jobs Recovery Could be Decade Away

The world must spend an extra US$700-billion a year to curb its addiction to fossil fuels blamed for worsening floods and heat waves and rising sea levels, a study issued by the World Economic Forum (WEF) showed on Monday. As government and business leaders prepare to meet at the forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, the world’s nations are divided over who should pay for lowering emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for a growing number of extreme weather events.

ON TUESDAY, the Bureau of Labour Statistics released its latest employment figures for American metropolitan areas, for the month of February. I thought it might be a good opportunity to take a look at dynamics of labour-market recovery across the country's biggest cities. The charts below are drawn from data on the 50 largest metropolitan areas (thanks to our research and graphics departments for help preparing these). First up, a look at employment growth over the past year:

My colleagues John Nye, Ilia Rainer, and Thomas Stratmann say maybe so:

Guest blog post by Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Matt ErskineToday, at the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Orlando, Florida, I joined Erika Poethig, the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to launch the latest key components of the Obama administration’s Strong Cities, Strong Communities (SC2) initiative, which was announced in July 2011 to help strengthen local capacity and spark economic growth in local communities while ensuring taxpayer dollars are used wisely and efficiently.The Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA)—an SC2 Federal partner—announced the $6 million Strong Cities, Strong Communities Visioning Challenge to help economically distressed cities leverage innovative strategies to spur local economic and job growth.The challenge will start with the competitive selection of six cities, one in each of EDA’s regions. Each of the winners will receive up to $1 million to conduct their own two-phase competitions. In the first phase, winning cities will encourage teams of experts in such fields as transportation planning, economic and community development, business incubation, and engineering to submit economic development proposals for their city or region. The highest-rated proposals, as evaluated by a city-appointed review panel, will receive cash awards. In the second phase, the finalists from the first round will compete for a cash prize by developing comprehensive economic development plans.

Though employers are finally hiring again, it could take until 2020 to get employment back to pre-recession levels.

After five years of worries over widespread budget cuts, crushing pension obligations and shrinking tax bases in many American cities, a recovering housing market and healthier state balance sheets could send more money trickling into municipal coffers this year.  

Seventy-five metro areas will struggle with double-digit unemployment through the end of the year, according to a U.S. Conference of Mayors report released Monday.