Job growth July 2012-13 for metro areas

[Ban my account ffs!]

http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2013/08/dallas-and-houston-keep-ranking-among-fastest-growing-u-s-metro-areas-for-jobs-as-of-july.html/

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/metro.pdf

Of course the growth in Texas would put some emerging economies to shame, but other regions are showing strong job growth.  It also shows that the economy is diverging between the growth areas and no-growth areas.  Few places are actually growing anemically as the national average might suggest.  Instead, there are places that are rocketing ahead out of recovery into expansion while other areas haven't even begun any kind of jobs recovery.

Numerically, here are the top 10 for change in jobs from July 2012 to July 2013:

NYC:  +189,400 jobs (+2.2%)
Dallas/Ft. Worth:  +111,800 (+3.7%)
Houston:  +97,700 (+3.6%)
Los Angeles:  +91,100 (+1.7%)
Atlanta:  +72,000 (+3.1%)
Chicago:  +68,300 (+1.6%)
Minneapolis/St. Paul:  +64,500 (+3.7%)
Boston:  +59,000 (+2.4%)
Phoenix:  +53,900 (+3.1%)
Seattle:  +51,900 (+3%)

Of course these are absolute numbers.  But the top performing large metros saw job growth betwen 3-3.7% between 2012-13, which is an extremely healthy job growth rate.

I was floored to see the 3.7% growth in the Twin Cities when you consider the number of youngs entering the workforce is now even with the number of 65 year olds and the census bureau thinks more people are leaving the Twin Cities than moving there.  (Really, all the outflow has been among older baby boomers set on retiring in warmer climes and are being replaced largely by the 25-34 age group.  The metro is youngifying.)

But percentage gains have been pretty crazy in some smaller metros thanks to the energy boom and the strongest economy on the plains/midwest in generations.  The farmers are doing very well.  The energy industry is doing very well.  Small towns in rural Minnesota are attracting large cohorts of immigrants from Mexico, southeast Asia, and east Africa so that towns of 12,000 people out on the prairie now have Ethiopian restaurants and most public notices are printed in spanish or various Asian and African languages.


But back to job growth:

Midland, TX, which is in the heart of the Eagle Ford shale development, saw 5100 jobs added in the past year, a whopping 6.2% growth.  Just down the highway in Odessa, there was a 5.2% growth.

North Dakota saw all of its metros grow at least 3%, but since none of the towns in the Bakken oil patch are considered metros, data is not available.  Needless to say, 3.2% job growth for the entire state in one year is a huge reversal of fortunes in a state whose population peaked in 1930.  As recently as the early 2000s, people had written ND off as a state of aging farmers with nobody to care for them.

Some surprises:

Western Lower Michigan is seeing rapid job growth, especially around Grand Rapids and the state of Michigan saw 1.8% job growth.

Worst performer among large metros?
Cleveland with -4500, or 0.4% of jobs lost.

And small?
Decatur, IL, which lost 4% of its jobs in one year.

As for unemployment percentage, Minneapolis-St. Paul has the 2nd lowest unemployment rate of any large metro at 4.9% after Oklahoma City, at 4.8%.

Yuma, AZ has the distinction of highest unemployment in the nation at 34.8%!!

[opebo]

Interesting.  Looks like the St. Louis metro is one of those doing quite poorly - no job growth at all.  Or am I misreading that?

[Ban my account ffs!]

Interesting.  Looks like the St. Louis metro is one of those doing quite poorly - no job growth at all.  Or am I misreading that?

They saw a 1% increase in jobs from July 2012 to July 2013.  The BLS pdf is kinda confusing.

Kansas City saw 1.4% job growth.

Some other weird things:

With Cleveland's lack of growth and moderate growth in both Columbus and Cincinnati, all three metros are now roughly the same size as far as employment is concerned.

Something that really surprised me is that the Twin Cities have nearly 100,000 more jobs than the Seattle metro... despite Seattle's metro having 130,000 more residents.  I guess that would explain the unemployment difference.  But Seattle is one of those metros that is both "sticky" (people tend not to move away) and "magnetic" (people tend to move there).  The Twin Cities are very "sticky", but not very "magnetic"...

The Twin Cities also have a larger proportion of the population in the 18-64 working range, and workforce participation is particularly high.  Seattle is younger, so much of that discrepancy might simply be a larger proportion of minor dependents.

[opebo]

Ok, now I found it.  Wow, a couple of metros in Michigan had huge job growth.  Presumably the surburban/satellite areas where the auto industry still actually exists, as it does not in Detroit.  The auto industry has come back incredibly strongly, they say.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Ok, now I found it.  Wow, a couple of metros in Michigan had huge job growth.  Presumably the surburban/satellite areas where the auto industry still actually exists, as it does not in Detroit.  The auto industry has come back incredibly strongly, they say.

I don't think Grand Rapids, which had the highest growth, has much of the auto industry there.  They're apparently known for medical, smaller manufacturers, and Christian publishing.

[Franknburger]

Numerically, here are the top 10 for change in jobs from July 2012 to July 2013:

NYC:  +189,400 jobs (+2.2%)
Dallas/Ft. Worth:  +111,800 (+3.7%)
Houston:  +97,700 (+3.6%)
Los Angeles:  +91,100 (+1.7%)
Atlanta:  +72,000 (+3.1%)
Chicago:  +68,300 (+1.6%)
Minneapolis/St. Paul:  +64,500 (+3.7%)
Boston:  +59,000 (+2.4%)
Phoenix:  +53,900 (+3.1%)
Seattle:  +51,900 (+3%)

Of course these are absolute numbers.  But the top performing large metros saw job growth betwen 3-3.7% between 2012-13, which is an extremely healthy job growth rate.

For international context, here the latest job creation rates for German metros (Dec. 2011-2012, +1.8% nat. avg.):

Munich:                                       +74,000 (+3.5%)
Berlin:                                        +45,200 (+ 2.7%)
Bonn-Cologne-Düsseldorf:            +42,600 (+ 1.9%)
Hamburg-Lübeck:                        +39,000 (+ 2.7%)
Rhine-Main (Frankfurt)                 +38,300 (+ 2.2%)
Stuttgart-Heilbronn                      +31.000 (+ 2.2%)
Rhine-Neckar                               +25,400 (+ 2.2%)
Hannover-Brunswick-Wolfsburg     +25,000 (+ 2.2%)
Ruhr (Duisburg-Essen-Dortmund)  +22,000 (+ 1,1%)
Nuremberg                                  +18,100 (+ 1.7%)

Some other high performers: Leipzig (+ 4.4%), Lake Constance area (+2.3%), East Frisia (+2.3%), Bremen (+2.3%).

Same trend as for the USA, though at a somehow lower level, which is due to the fact that the German labour market upswing already started in 2010. Job growth is mainly taking place in the larger metros. Rural / small-town areas, especially in the East (-0.8% job loss), but also in parts of the West, are falling behind. The same applies to the old industrial cores (Ruhr, Saar at only 0.7% job growth).

[Nhoj]

Towns of 12K with a Ethiopian restaurant impresses you? please, i live 5 miles from a town of 3500 with a Somali one.