[URBAN NOTE] "Want a Job? Go to Brooklyn"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg View's Justin Fox notes, with some qualifications, that suburbs, and New York City's outer boroughs, seem to be where employment is growing most strongly in the United States.

The new job engine of the U.S. is, get this, Brooklyn. Yes, it is widely known that the most populous of New York City’s boroughs has been undergoing an economic renaissance. But it’s still something of a shock to learn that Kings County, aka Brooklyn, population 2.6 million, has seen faster job growth since 2007 than any other county of significant size1 in the nation.

The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island aren’t doing badly either. [. . . W]hen it comes to creating jobs during the current economic recovery, the leaders have been suburbs of Houston, Dallas and Denver,3 Austin, Texas, and its suburbs, San Francisco4 and … the outer boroughs of New York City. New York County, also known as Manhattan, was nowhere near the leader list, with only 0.07 percent annualized job growth since 2007. Manhattan still accounts for more jobs than the other four boroughs combined (2.3 million to 1.7 million), but almost all of New York City’s much-vaunted recent employment growth has been occurring a bridge, tunnel or ferry away.

I got all this wonderful data from Jed Kolko, a veteran real estate economist who was trying to answer the question of whether job growth in the U.S. really has shifted from suburbs to cities. He was reacting in part to a study released last year by the Portland, Oregon, think tank City Observatory that showed what seemed to be a sea change after 2007..

Much more analysis and data is available at Fox's article.