Jobs of the future are clustering in a handful of (BLUE) U.S. cities study finds... fuels resentment
Last edited Mon Dec 9, 2019, 04:06 AM - Edit history (2)
Jobs of the future are clustering in a handful of U.S. cities, study finds
Howard Schneider
4 MIN READ
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new analysis of where “innovation” jobs are being created in the United States paints a stark portrait of a divided economy where the industries seen as key to future growth cluster in a narrowing set of places.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-superstars/jobs-of-the-future-are-clustering-in-a-handful-of-u-s-cities-study-finds-idUSKBN1YD0B4
Divergence in job growth, incomes and future prospects between strong-performing cities and the rest of the country is an emerging focus of political debate and economic research. It is seen as a source of social stress, particularly since President Donald Trump tapped the resentment of left-behind areas in his 2016 presidential campaign.
Research from the Brookings Institution released on Monday shows the problem cuts deeper than many thought. Even cities that have performed well in terms of overall employment growth, such as Dallas, are trailing in attracting workers in 13 industries with the most productive private sector jobs.
Between 2005 and 2017, industries such as chemical manufacturing, satellite telecommunications, and scientific research flocked to about 20 cities, led by well-established standouts San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, Boston and San Diego, the study found. Combined, these mostly coastal cities captured an additional 6% of 'innovation' jobs - some 250,000 positions.
Companies in those industries tend to benefit from being close to each other, with the better-educated employees they target also attracted to urban amenities.
Brookings Institution economist Mark Muro said he fears the trend risks becoming “self-reinforcing and destructive” as the workforce separates into a group of highly productive and high-earning metro areas and everywhere else.
Even though expensive housing, high wages, and congestion have prompted some tech companies to open offices outside of Silicon Valley, those moves have not been at scale. Most U.S. metro areas are either losing innovation industry jobs outright or gaining no share, Muro wrote.
Over this decade, “a clear hierarchy of economic performance based on innovation capacity had become deeply entrenched,” Muro and co-author Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, wrote in the report. Across the 13 industries they studied, workers in the upper echelon of cities were about 50% more productive than in others.
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Last edited Tue Dec 10, 2019, 07:56 AM - Edit history (2)
and not every rural town is failing economically by any means. Every day more conservatives are intentionally leaving higher-paying jobs in cities for lower pay in conforming communities full of people "like them." Although they probably resent finding they can't afford to shop in most urban mall shops, thanks to modern technology other stores are full of more good-quality goods, and far more affordable ones, than ever before.
All the cons we knew who left the city (L.A.) long ago for smaller, more conforming communities are smugly and irritatingly superior about it. They probably feel some resentment when others don't envy them enough or when forced to remembr they couldn't afford to live in a blue city now. 
But they don't want to, and wherever all this is taking our nation, that natural preference is key.
The people we knew had typically lived in self-defined small "communities" within the giant city, rejecting and literally never seeing or knowing most of it, including many of its world-class amenities. To a shocking degree to me each time I ran into this common preference in its conservative extremes. Like people who worked downtown but never once took the elevator to the expensive business-district street level and stepped outside. For god's sake, the MOCA was right across that well-maintained boulevard, a couple blocks down a fantastic bakery, and the Grand Central Market within lunch-hour walking distance!!! Okay, the GCM is full of "weird" things, and not all smell fantastic, gotta admit that. But still, !!!
In the individual picture, that the places conservatives are congregating lack the riches of blue-city vitality suits people who are wired to be happiest and contented living focused inward on a small world of others like them. All small-town people we've ever known, cons or libs, have been far more full of smug virtue than resentment, wondering what's wrong with the rest of the world as routine as commenting on the weather, as long as non-innovative local industry is able to provide modest incomes.
