Browse by Tags

Speaking yesterday at the Brookings Institution , Small Business Administrator Karen Mills once again argued that the big challenge for small businesses is getting access to capital. Mills pointed to positive signs for small business growth, but without banks lending to smaller institutions in many communities, there is a gap between supply and demand. One answer may be fostering more private/public partnerships: Watch more excerpts from Mills's appearance yesterday here .

The Brookings Institution 's latest MetroMonitor shows continuing growth in most metropolitan US markets, but the rate of growth is slowing as the labor market struggles continue. Here's a look at the employment picture across metro areas: From the report: Seventy-three of the 100 largest metropolitan areas had job growth in the first quarter of 2011, up from 67 in the fourth quarter of 2010 and 35 in the third quarter of 2010. However, the number of large metropolitan areas with job growth fell short of its recent high of 94, achieved in the second quarter of 2010. Moreover, the rate of job growth in the first quarter, 0.3 percent for the 100 largest metropolitan areas combined, was very low, equivalent to only a 1.2 percent job annual job growth rate, which is too low to keep the unemployment rate from rising. Twenty large metropolitan areas gained jobs in all of the last four quarters. Austin, Charleston, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Grand Rapids, Greenville, Hartford, Houston, Milwaukee, New Haven, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Provo, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, Toledo, Washington, and Youngstown gained jobs in every quarter from the second quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011. Thirty-two more metropolitan areas gained jobs in both the last quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011. Seventy-seven of the 100 largest metropolitan areas lost a greater share of jobs 13 quarters after the start of the Great Recession (the fourth quarter of 2007) than they did during the first 13 quarters after the start of any of the previous three national recessions. Thirteen quarters after the start of the national recession, the 100 largest metropolitan areas combined had lost 5.3 percent of the jobs they had at the start of the Great Recession that began in 2007, compared to 1.1 percent for the 2001 recession. However, in the 1981–1982 recession, employment in the 100 largest metropolitan areas had grown by 6.3 percent in the first 13 quarters after the start of the national recession and in the 1990–1991 recession it had grown by 0.5 percent. Report author Howard Wial discusses some of the key findings in this short video: Brookings has several interactive maps in support of the MetroMonitor report. You can access them here . And read the full report here .

The last decade was a bad one for poverty in America, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution . After the economic growth of the 1990s brought "near record lows in the poverty rate and considerable declines in the number of high-poverty neighborhoods", the early 2000s saw those numbers shoot back up. And there is some data that shows that suburbs led that growth. Brookings researchers Elizabeth Kneebone and Emily Garr write: In 2000, the greatest share of the poor lived in the primary cities of the country’s largest metro areas. These cities were home to almost 400,000 more poor than their suburbs, and the balance of the poor population was more likely to live in non-metropolitan communities than small metro areas. However, growth rates well above average in the suburban and small metro area poor populations have re-drawn the map over the course of the decade. Most notably, by 2008 a plurality of the nation’s poor lived in large metropolitan suburbs. Between 2000 and 2008, the number of these suburban poor increased by 25 percent—10 points above the national average and close to 5 times the growth rate for the poor in primary cities. Overall, suburbs gained more than 2.5 million poor individuals, accounting for almost half of the total increase in the nation’s poor population since 2000. Smaller metro areas saw their poor population increase almost 20 percent, a gain of 1.3 million poor over the eight-year period. At the same time, non-metro area and primary city poor populations also grew, but at much slower paces of 12.1 and 5.6 percent—or 842,000 and 582,000 people—respectively. As a result, by 2008 suburbs had overtaken primary cities as home to the largest share of the nation’s poor (almost one-third), and small metro areas housed more poor people than non-metro areas. Here's a look at the increase in the poverty rate in suburbs compared to other types of communities: And here's a look at the growth in the poverty rate for suburbs in the four major regions of the country: Read The Suburbanization of Poverty here .

Add Fed Chair Ben Bernanke's voice to the growing chorus that the recession appears to be over and a long slow recovery is beginning. Bernanke spoke at the Brookings Insititution yesterday about the events of the last year, and during his speech he noted that he was well aware that forecasters were announcing the end of the recession. Here is a key excerpt from the speech. But the general view of most forecasters is that that pace of growth in 2010 will be moderate, less than you might expect given the depth of the recession, because of ongoing headwinds, including still ongoing financial and credit problems, you know, deleveraging by households, the needs for adjustments in the economy, sectoral adjustments in the economy, the need for a fiscal exit at some point, many, many factors that will likely, at least based on current information, make the 2010 recovery moderate, and in particular, not much faster than sort of the underlying potential growth rate of the economy. And the arithmetic is that unless the economy grows, you know, significantly faster than its longer term growth rate, it’ll be relatively slow in creating jobs over and above those needed to employ people coming into the labor force, and therefore, the unemployment rate would tend to come down quite slowly. So that’s a risk, that’s a possibility. Of course, there is on both sides of that forecast; we could have a stronger recovery, we could have a weaker recovery, but if we do, in fact, see moderate growth, but not growth much more than the underlying potential growth rate, then, unfortunately, unemployment will be slow to come down. It will come down, but it may take some time. Obviously, that’s a very serious concern, and that’s one reason why, even though from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point, it’s still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time as many people will still find that their job security and their employment status is not what they wish it was, and so that’s a challenge for us and all policy-makers going forward. You can read a full transcript of the speech, and watch the full session by clicking here .