Recession Job Losses and Recovery in Midwest Cities

The Windy Citizen pointed me at coverage of metro area job losses in the recession. Here is how the 12 cities I principally cover in this blog stacked up, sorted in descending order of percentage losses:

1. Detroit; 139,600 jobs; -7.5%
2. Milwaukee; 44,800; -5.2%
3. Cleveland; 54,100; -5.1%
4. Chicago; 206,200; -4.5%
5. Indianapolis; 40,200; -4.4%
6. Cincinnati; 42,200; -4.0%
7. Louisville; 22,900; -3.7%
8. Minneapolis-St. Paul; 63,100; -3.5%
9. St. Louis; 43,900; -3.3%
10. Pittsburgh; 32,800 – 2.8%
11. Kansas City; 21,900; -2.1%
12. Columbus, Ohio; 19,600; -2.1%

A couple things that jump out of me from this are that Chicago and Indianapolis are doing far worse than conventional wisdom views of their overall economic health. Both regions are getting clobbered. The Pittsburgh story gets some additional ammunition, as does my view that Columbus is the next Midwestern star.

Recession Job Recovery

So when will the jobs come back? Nobody knows for sure, but an organization called IHS Global Insight has predicted the year in which employment will match its pre-recession peak in various major US cities (via IBJ News Talk):

• Kansas City: 2011
• Columbus: 2012
• Indianapolis: 2012
• Louisville: 2013
• Minneapolis-St. Paul: 2013
• Pittsburgh: 2013
• Chicago: 2014
• Cincinnati: 2014
• St. Louis: 2014
• Cleveland: After 2015
• Detroit: After 2015
• Milwaukee: After 2015

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