An interesting look at who is getting hit hardest by the economy

In a previous post I talked about things Louisville could do to boost its economy and to make it a more competitive city. I was planning on writing a follow up post when I ran into a article in the New York Times entitled "How Some Places Fare Better in Hard Times" . 

The article is by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. When he compared unemployment statistics across metropolitan areas and he found an interesting pattern. Cities that tended to have high unemployment rates shared similar commonalties.  The cities had a reliance on manufacturing, most of their employment was outside of the city center, and they tended to have low share of their adults with college degrees. 

While most of the cities that are really doing poor have unemployment rates well into the double digits, Louisville's is at 9.2%. We aren't as bad off as some of the other cities, but we have a lot of the problems that they do. we use to be a heavy manufacturing town.  Most of that has left, but Ford and GE are still here. We also trail most of our competitor cities when it comes to percent of population with college degrees. However, we have made great strides in that area. As far as being centralized. That's a good question. A lot of the jobs either have moved or are moving to east end of town, but with the resurgence of downtown that may be changing. 

I think Louisville has been going through the transformation from manufacturing to service economy. We have just been doing it at a very slow pace. I think we will weather this economic downturn without losing to many more large manufacturers. But their days are numbered. Ford, GE, and the plants that make up Rubbertown wont be here to much longer. DuPont has already closed. I'm sure others are next. 

Louisville is trying to be a medical and distribution hub. I think that's nobel and something we should pursue, but I don' think that's going to keep us going. We have to embrace our artsyness, and push forward with creating a truly creative economy. We can continue to try and prop up manufacturing (which in the case of Ford and Ge we should until we can replace those high paying jobs), or we can reach for the future with something that will differentiate us from the pack.