Study: Cities Gaining Post-Recession Economic Clout

Josh Lehner shares news of work by the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis to update data on employment growth by metro size for the United States. Lehner summarizes the data:

In the big picture, not much has changed in the past year or two. America’s largest metros (the 51 with a population of 1 million or more) have not only seen the strongest gains in recovery, they are growing at faster rates than their smaller metro and nonmetro counterparts. In other words, the gap is widening, even as the rural recovery is real, albeit slow.

The article includes three infographics that provide detail and illustration of these points.

In a separate article, Joe Cortright follows up on that post to provide additional evidence of the growing significance of cities to the economic health of the country as a whole. In addition to making use of the infographic created by the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis to show job growth in large metro areas, Cortright makes use of three other metrics to make his case: Fitch Ratings, the rent gradient (with data from the decennial census and the American Community Survey), and the walkability premium (with data from Zillow Talk).