Here's the story and map from the
New York Times Upshot, "
Which Areas in America Are Worse Off Since 2016?" An excerpt from Jed Kolko's piece follows:
Although economists now expect that the coronavirus will lead to a major recession, the American economy improved steadily for nearly a decade, under both President Obama and President Trump.
Gains have been widespread since 2016, when Mr. Trump was elected, with the lowest-wage industries and workers seeing the biggest wage gains. And yet not all of America is better off.
Five percent of Americans live in counties where the economy was worse off in 2019 than in 2016, on at least two of three key economic measures.
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Where are these worse-off places? Mostly in rural America, outside of metropolitan areas, though some are in small metro areas or the outer suburbs of the largest metros.
What jumps out visually from the map: Nebraska is in a world of hurt, especially since Trump became president. Adjacent parts of the Dakotas and Montana are hurting, too. Otherwise, the region experiencing most pain is the mid-South: parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Here's Kolko's analysis:
Worse-off counties have a higher-than-average share of agricultural and manufacturing jobs — despite the manufacturing boom of 2018 — and relatively few tech, arts and media jobs.
1 comment:
It would be interesting to drill deeper into the data, particularly in Nebraska (my home state). A timeline trend of the data would be useful too. Identifying the particular issues per state/county would better help craft solutions.
This analysis seems overly simplistic to me, and perhaps applying an urban perspective (as the New York Times tends to do) to a rural community misses important data/context.
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