The Community Research Collaborative Blog

Is There Any Good Economic News?

By: Janet Harrah

The economic news of doom and gloom over the past few years is well documented.  High rates of unemployment, declining home sales and prices, declining tax revenues, rising deficit spending, rising gas prices and Europe’s debt crisis are among the negative news of recent years.  Now that the recession is officially over is there any good economic news?  The answer to that question depends on your point of view.  The economy has been improving over the past year, but full recovery is still some distance in the future.  So it’s the age old question:  is the glass half full or half empty?  In this posting, we are going to take the point of view of the half full glass.

 

Read More..

 

How Many Jobs Are Needed Over the Next Year to Keep the Unemployment Rate in Cincinnati Steady?

By: Janet Harrah

The Cincinnati economy needs to create approximately 1,000 jobs per month over the next year to maintain its current unemployment rate.  The number of jobs needed to keep the unemployment rate steady is dependent on: (1) the population growth of persons 16 years and over and (2) the rate of labor force participation.  In the Cincinnati area, between 2005 and 2010, the population 16 years and over increased on average, 1.2% each year.  During this same period, the labor force participation rate (LFPR) has averaged 67.3% (see Table 1).  The LFPR represents the proportion of the population 16 years and over that is in the labor force. 

If the average 1.2% growth continues, the population 16 years and over will increase by about 19,700 (see Table 2) in 2012.  With the labor force participation rate at 67.3% then an additional 13,200 people will join the Cincinnati labor force.  To maintain the area’s current 9.1% unemployment rate, 12,000 of those individuals joining the labor force will need a job.  In other words, the economy will need to create approximately 1,000 net new jobs each month to maintain the current unemployment rate.

 

Read More...

Income Divide Sparks Public Protests

By: John Besl

The campsites are gone from Piatt Park in downtown Cincinnati, but the discontent behind the “Occupy Cincinnati” protest movement continues to simmer, and the original “Occupy Wall Street” protest drags on.  A familiar criticism of the protests goes like this, “What do they want, and what exactly are they protesting against?”  Boiled down to its essence, the short answer is income inequality, whereby “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”  I’d like to use the space this month to report on this timely topic, first describing recent national trends, then drilling down with new state and metropolitan data from the American Community Survey.  Finally, we’ll highlight a single Cincinnati census tract that ranks first on a key measure of income inequality among some 60,000 tracts nationwide.

 

Read More...

New Data on Unemployment for Metropolitan Areas Hint at Another Downturn in the Labor Market

By: Janet Harrah

In analyzing the economy, economists and business analysts study a variety of data such as the number of jobs, number of new housing permits, number of home sales and total retail sales.  Looking at these data at one point in time usually is not very informative.  Most analysts track data over time to determine the extent to which individual industries or regions are contributing to or detracting from economic growth. 

One problem with tracking trends over a few months or quarters is that many data series have movements that recur regularly.  For example, over the course of a year, the size of the labor force, the levels of employment and unemployment, and other measures of labor market activity undergo fluctuations due to seasonal events, including changes in weather, harvests, major holidays, and school schedules. Because these seasonal events follow a more or less regular pattern each year, their influence on statistical trends can be eliminated by seasonally adjusting the statistics from month to month. These seasonal adjustments make it easier to observe the cyclical, underlying trend, and other non-seasonal movements in the series.

 

Read More...

New Census Bureau Report Documents the Spread of Poverty

By: John Besl

The American public has been bombarded lately with sour economic news.  The Census Bureau piled even more evidence last month, with the release of its annual report on national trends in income, poverty, and health insurance coverage.  (View the report here.)  The data were collected as part of the 2011 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement. 

The number of Americans living in poverty increased to 46.2 million in 2010, the highest total in 52 years of published poverty estimates.  An additional 2.6 million people slipped into poverty between 2009 and 2010, the fourth consecutive annual increase.  The poverty rate also rose for the fourth consecutive year, from 14.3 percent in 2009 to 15.1 percent in 2010.

 

Read More...

Cincinnati’s Real GDP Growth: Trailing Nearly All Its Peers

By: Janet Harrah

One hears a great deal about GDP in the news lately. One might ask, “Well, just exactly what is GDP, anyway?” Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, measures the final value of all the goods and services produced in the United States in a given period of time.

The reason that economists and virtually everyone else follows GDP is because it is the broadest measure of economic output, and provides the best overall picture of economic activity. So, as the nation’s economy rises and falls, the GDP is the best way to track that progress (or more recently, the lack thereof).

 

Read More...

Will the Residential Construction Industry Make a Comeback?

By: Janet Harrah

At the height of the housing boom, building permits were authorized for more than 13,000 housing units per year in the Cincinnati metro area.  In 2010, just 3,200 housing units were authorized, a decline of more than 75 percent (see Table 1).  With a slow economic recovery and stricter mortgage regulations on the horizon, when or will the residential construction industry return to its prior levels of activity?

 

Read More... 

Personal Income Rose in 2010 After Falling in 2009

By: Janet Harrah

Personal income rose in 2010 in all but four of the nation’s 366 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), according to estimates released in early August by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.  Personal income in the metropolitan portion of the United States rose 2.9 percent in 2010 after falling 1.9 percent in 2009. Personal income growth in 2010 ranged from 10.1 percent in Elizabethtown, Kentucky to -0.9 percent in Grand Junction, Colorado.

How do Cincinnati trends compare to its competitors?  In this analysis, the Cincinnati metro area was compared to 11 peer metropolitan statistical areas including:

                                                            Austin, TX                        Louisville, KY
                                                            Charlotte, NC                  Minneapolis, MN
                                                            Cleveland, OH                Pittsburgh, PA
                                                            Columbus, OH                Raleigh, NC
                                                            Denver, CO                      St. Louis, MO
                                                            Indianapolis, IN

 

Read More... 

High School Graduation Rates and the Economy

By:  Geoff Zimmerman

This month, I’m going to highlight a recent report that explores the close connection between education and the economy at a national, state, and regional level.  The report was released by the Alliance for Excellent Education and is titled Education and the Economy:  Boosting State and National Economies by Improving High School Graduation Rates.  As part of this study, an economic model was created that demonstrates the economic benefits of improving high school graduation rates. The model, developed by Economic Modeling Specialists, Inc., calculates the gross increase in important economic factors such as individual earnings, home and auto sales, job and economic growth, spending and investment, tax revenue, and human capital based on reducing by half the number of students from the Class of 2010 who failed to graduate on time. The Alliance has calculated economic findings for the more than 220 U.S. metro areas, as well as findings for the nation and each state.

 

Read More...

Cincinnati Labor Market 2010: Few Jobs Pay More Than $50,000 Per Year

By: Janet Harrah

Retail salespersons and food preparation and serving workers including fast food were the occupations with the highest employment in 2010 in the Cincinnati MSA, according to data released in May by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  These two occupations combined made up 5.3 percent of total Cincinnati employment, with employment levels of 26,500 and 24,180, respectively.  These data from the Occupational Employment Statistics program provide employment and wage estimates for wage and salary workers in 22 major occupational groups and nearly 800 detailed occupations. 

 

Read More...