Brookings Report Shows Only Marginal Economic Improvement
Posted: Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Download MP3The Brookings Institution's latest report on the state of the economy paints a bleak picture for the nation, and the Great Lakes Region. Ideastream's Bill Rice reports.
According to the Brookings report, an appreciable rebound in manufacturing plus census hiring helped unemployment fall faster in Great Lakes metro areas than in cities nationwide during the quarter ending in June. Manufacturing drove small jobs gains in the Great Lakes. But those gains don’t signal a turnaround for manufacturing, which was still 9.2 percent lower than at the end of 2007 when the recession started. Brookings’ Howard Wial was a coauthor of the quarterly report.
Wial: “It had been that places that declined very quickly also rebounded quickly. That was largely because manufacturing led regions into recession and then led them into recovery. It’s not clear that’s what’s going to happen this time.”
Cleveland, Grand Rapids Pittsburgh and Youngstown all showed higher employment gains than the national average of top one hundred cities during the second quarter. Cleveland was number 7 in job gains, but found itself generally in the middle of the pack in many measures compared to other cities. But all cities are far from their peak employment from 2004 to 2006.
Wial says a drop in housing prices - almost 22 percent from the peak in 2005 - put Cleveland in the tier of cities where properties are priced below what you would expect based on trends in employment, wages and interest rates. Cleveland homes are 7.5 percent underpriced, according to the report. Akron homes are 9.1 percent underpriced.
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Economy, Facing the Mortgage Crisis, Help Wanted
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