Economics

A friend was explaining some philosophy to me the other day and he used an analogy to make his point: If you can get a cannibal to use a knife and fork, is that progress? Of course, the answer is "no". So when I heard the next day that transportation infrastructure performance in the US improved significantly at the height of the worst recession since the great depression I had to ask: is that progress?  read more »

I studied with the Austrian economists at New York University. The Austrian school of economics (as contrasted to Keynesians or Chicago school economists) work with a theory about business cycles that essentially starts from the understanding that what appear to be almost mechanical, regular ups and downs in the economy are actually caused by the periodic disappointment of the expectations of entrepreneurs. The alternative is to suggest that business owners periodically and collective wake up stupid one morning and start making a lot of bad decisions.  read more »

Much has been written in recent years about the costs of congestion, with ground breaking research by academics such as Prud'homme & Chang-Wong and Hartgen & Fields showing that the more jobs that can be accessed in a particular period of time, the greater the economic output of a metropolitan area.  read more »

A few days ago BusinessWeek released a list of the top 40 metropolitan economies based on data compiled at the Brookings Institution's Metromonitor project. But, as many old media sites tend to do, they've locked the list behind a slow-loading slide show in a cheap attempt to drum up page views. Many of the commenters to the original article couldn't even find the list.  read more »

Mark Hovind at Jobbait.com has released another fascinating set of maps and data on industry employment trends by state over the past few months. Here's a taste:

The maps below show the employment trends by state and industry sector for the 12 months ending June 2009 (July will be available August 21). Green is growing faster than the workforce. Grey is growing slower. Red is declining. Black is declining more than 8%.  read more »

Unemployment in the construction sector increased by 79,000 in June, according to a report The Associated General Contractors of America released earlier this month. Over the past year, that number has grown to 992,000.

Even more alarming is the disparity between the construction worker unemployment rate, over 17.4 percent, and the national average for all sectors, around 9.7. Construction employment is crumbling before our eyes.  read more »

In the past month, Washington D.C. has experienced both an increase in number of jobs as well as an increase in unemployment, according to the Washington Post.

The city’s unemployment rate rose from 9.9 in April to 10.7 percent in May – far surpassing the national average of 9.4 percent – despite gaining about 1,400 jobs primarily with the federal government.  read more »

Here's a quick map of the newly released May 2009 metropolitan area unemployment numbers. On this map, color signifies the rate in May 2009 and size of bubble indicates the rate point change since May of last year. Green dots are below the national unemployment level of 9.1 in May, and red dots are above the national number.  read more »

Faced with an economic downturn and a bursting real estate bubble, Americans look to be staying put in greater numbers. According to Ball State demographer Michael Hicks, interviewed in an article examining the trend in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Property values have dropped so much, people can't pick up and move the way they used to."  read more »

Is the recent talk of "green shoots" coming out of this recession realistic? A recent report from the New America Foundation outlines the strong likelihood of a jobless recession that "could perpetuate the crises in the housing and banking sectors and prevent a sustainable and healthy economic recovery." A jobless recovery will prevent the wage growth necessary to stimulate business investment, maintain consumption, and pay down debt.  read more »