Less than 10 percent of US metropolitan areas have seen the job market recover to pre-recession levels, and nearly one quarter of these urban areas will not see such a recovery for at least five years, according to a report released Wednesday by the US Conference of Mayors.
Those areas facing the most protracted recovery (or, more likely, a renewed downward plunge) include most of the metropolitan areas in California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida, the centers of the housing market collapse, and the industrial states of Michigan and Ohio.
Among the biggest metropolitan areas, Atlanta showed the poorest recovery, regaining only 19.5 percent of the jobs lost since the 2008 financial crash, with Detroit second worst at 20.4 percent. This was followed by Los Angeles at 20.7 percent and the San Francisco Bay Area at 26.7 percent.
Phoenix recovered 29.1 percent of the jobs lost since 2008, Chicago 29.7 percent, Miami 30.7 percent, Philadelphia 40.8 percent, Seattle 49.3 percent, New York City and Minneapolis-St. Paul 54.2 percent each, and Boston 92.1 percent. Dallas, Houston and Washington DC were the only metropolitan areas among the 15 largest to report employment higher today than in 2008.
The report prepared by IHS Global Insight for the group, which includes the mayors of 363 US cities, found economic growth of only 1.3 percent in 2011 and barely 2 percent this year, figures too low to make any significant reduction in urban unemployment.
High unemployment is combined with falling real wages: the mayors’ report found that median real income for US households in 2010 was $49,455, a decline of 7.1 percent over the decade since 1999, when median household income was $53,252.
While conducted within the framework of official economic statistics that claim the recession was “over” in June 2009, the report to the mayors’ group underscored the dire conditions facing working people in metropolitan areas that together comprise the vast majority of the US population.
Local governments have themselves contributed to the depression conditions by eliminating 533,000 workers from their own payrolls since 2008, according to figures provided by the Department of Labor. Cities have cut workers, canceled public works projects and slashed wages in order to eliminate budget deficits, a process that intensified in 2011 after the expiration of the financial aid provided state and local government under the 2009 federal stimulus package.
via www.wsws.org
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