Im-Politic: The Myth that Violent American Crime is Mainly a Red State Problem

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cities, crime, data, Democrats, election 2022, GOP, Im-Politic, midterms, murders, Republicans, statistics, Third Way

If you’ve been following the national debate about crime during this midterm election year, you’ve probably read one of the Democrats’ main efforts to deny responsibility for surging numbers of murders and other violent lawlessness in particular, and indeed to pin the blame on Republicans. That’s the finding that the vast majority of states in which the murder problem is worst have long been dominated politically by the GOP.

Trouble is, it’s a claim that’s as false as it’s easily demolished – for the simple reason that most U.S. states are pretty big and, above all, diverse political units, and that crime rates can vary dramatically among them. And that’s precisely what was accidentally overlooked or politically ignored by researchers at Third Way, “a national think tank that champions modern center-left ideas” along with the Democrats’ defenders throughout the Mainstream Media (see, e.g., here and here).

Specifically, when authors Kylie Murdock and Jim Kessler argued that “8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century,” what they didn’t mention is that in most of these states, the numbers are high mainly because of pervasive violence in cities with Democratic mayors.

For 2020, the year emphasized in the Third Way report, that case doesn’t hold for South Carolina, and it’s weak for Arkansas (although interestingly, Democratic-led Little Rock, the state’s capital and biggest city, accounted for 18.18 percent of Arkansas’ murders despite containing only 6.57 of its inhabitants). And there’s not enough detailed data for Alabama to make judgements either way. But according to the official data I’ve combed through from the U.S. Census (for population), the FBI (for numbers of state murders), and various state governments (for numbers of city murders), it emphatically does hold for:

>Mississippi. It sits atop Third Way’s list of murder leaders, but would surely be much further down if not for Jackson. Despite containing only 5.49 percent of Mississippi’s population in 2020, its Democratic-led capital city accounted for 61.32 percent of its murders.

>Louisana. The Bayou State is second on Third Way’s list, but murders in Democratic-run New Orleans represented 28.98 percent of its 2020 murders, even though the Crescent City’s population was only 6.73 percent of the 2020 state total. Moreover, Louisiana’s second-biggest city, state capital Baton Rouge, is also headed by a Democratic mayor, and suffered 14.35 percent of the state’s 2020 murders, despite accounting for just 4.76 percent of all Louisianans.

All told, these 43.33 percent of Louisiana’s murders in 2020 took place in these two Democratic cities, which only accounted for 11.50 percent of the state’s population.

>Kentucky. Ranking third on Third Way’s list, the Bluegrass State’s murder totals have obviously been boosted by Democratic Louisville. The city was home to 13.87 percent of Kentucky-ans in 2020, yet was responsible for 55.99 percent of its murders that year.

>Missouri. The fourth state on Third Way’s list is another state whose murder totals have been distorted by two Democratc-led cities. St. Louis and Kansas City combined represented 11.82 percent of all Missourians in 2020, but 58.73 percent of the state’s murders that year took place within their limits.

>Tennessee. The Volunteer State, tenth on Third Way’s list, also contains two Democratic-run cities with outsized murder totals. Memphis and Nashville held 20.05 percent of the state’s population in 2020, but were the sites of 60.48 percent of their murders that year.

It’s true that big city totals also account for disproportionate shares of murders in many Democratic-run states. For example, in 2020, New York City contained 42.95 percent of all New York State’s 2020 residents. But the City experienced 57.82 percent of the state’s murders that year. (The gap widens further when you add in Democratic-led Buffalo, the state’s second largest city.)

More extreme is the situation in Illinois, where in 2020 Chicago was home to 21.22 percent of the Illinois-ans, but was the scene of 74.78 percent of the state’s murders.

But the obvious conclusion here isn’t the one drawn by Third Way – that Republican states have at least as big a violent crime problem as Democratic states. The obvious conclusion is that the nation’s crime problem is heavily concentrated in big cities, which are run by Democrats whether they’re in Red states or Blue states.

With the midterm elections just a few weeks away, the good news here is that voters seem to understand this reality, as they’ve consistently been giving Republicans higher marks on handling the crime issue than Democrats (see, e.g., here and here for two recent examples). Can Democrats turn this situation around? Time of course is running short. But their chances will be especially dim if they keep trying to blame-shift rather than offering credible solutions to violent crime.

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Renaissance or a Bubble in Buffalo?

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bubbles, Buffalo, Buffalo shooting, cities, Commerce Department, economic growth, income, per capita income, Rustbelt, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I’ve only visited Buffalo, New York once in my adult life, to speak at a conference in 2009, but between meeting lots of interesting folks, downing a humongous portion of buffalo wings at the Anchor Bar that claims to have invented them, and seeing Niagara Falls for the first time since childhood, I’ve got great memories of the place.

So I was initially thrilled to see The New York Times run a lengthy piece July 3 reporting that this grand old city is enjoying a strong comeback from decades of Rustbelt-type industrial and therefore economic decline. The article, moreover, seemed especially encouraging given the appalling massacre of ten residents in May in the city’s heavily African American East Side neighborhood.

When I finished reading, though, I wasn’t so sure how on target the piece was. That’s both because it was almost entirely data free, and because I’m not convinced that the kinds of economic activity that are emerging as new growth engines for Buffalo – like “city-wide initiatives to pour billions into parks, public art projects and apartment complexes,” “office and educational complexes,” and food halls, gyms, and craft breweries – can enable it to regain the kind of prosperity created by its now-shiveled industrial base.

So I looked at the data – from the U.S. Commerce Department – and the relatively few of the findings sure don’t scream “Renaissance!” to me, or even close. And this observation holds whether the comparison is between Buffalo and the rest of the country, or between Buffalo during the last decade and Buffalo during roughly the previous decade.

I focus on these timeframes because the only hard statistic presented by the Times reporters to show progress in Buffalo was the finding that “Its population of 278,000 in the 2020 census was up 7 percent from 261,000 in 2010.”

The following statistics don’t cover just Buffalo. The closest approximation permitted by the Commerce Department numbers is what the U.S. Census Bureau (a part of Commerce) calls the Buffalo Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which includes smaller neighboring cities like Cheektowaga and (yes!) Niagara Falls. But let’s call it “close enough.”

First I looked at how the Buffalo metro area economy overall, and some major portions of it (including some emphasized in the Times article), have grown (or not) in inflation-adjusted terms versus how their counterparts in U.S. metropolitan areas have fared. The individual sectors are construction, manufacturing, retail, real estate, professional and scientific services, and the arts-recreation-accommodation- and-food-services cluster.

Unfortunately, this analysis shows that Buffalo continues to be a serious laggard. Between 2010 and 2020, its MSA increased its output of goods and services by just 4.13 percent after adjusting for inflation – versus 17.69 percent for urban America as a whole. Buffalo also trailed its national metro area counterparts in real growth during this period in every one of the six individual economic sectors examined. Indeed, in three (construction, manufacturing, and the arts etc cluster), real output shrank during that decade, whereas for all metro areas, such decline took place only in the arts cluster. Moreover, in all cases (including that arts cluster) Buffalo not only lagged – it lagged badly.

The Buffalo MSA fared much better in terms of its residents’ income. In pre-inflation dollars (the only data tracked at this level of national detail), its total personal income rose by 43.55 percent between 2010 and 2020, versus 55.78 percent for U.S. metro areas as a whole. On a per capita basis, the results were almost equal: 44.82 percent current dollar growth for the Buffalo MSA versus 45.39 percent for its all U.S. MSAs.

The big takeaway so far: The Buffalo region’s growth has been sluggish at best over the last decade, but area residents made awfully good money.

Comparing Buffalo area growth and income between 2010 and 2020, and during the previous decade, yields even stranger (at least to me) results. In all the categories I examined except one, its growth performance was worse during the latter decade than during the former (even taking into account that data for the Buffalo MSA only goes back to 2001).

Overall, it was much worse, with real gross product improving by 13.94 percent during that earlier decade – more than three times faster than from 2010 to 2020. In addition, in the six individual sectors examined, decade-to-decade improvement was registered only in construction – which contracted much more slowly in price-adjusted terms than in 2000-2010. That decade, remember, featured the great national housing bubble and its bursting.

In terms of income, though, Buffalo’s between 2000 and 2010 grew more slowly than during the ten years after according to both the aggregate (32.43 percent) and per capita (35.86 percent) figures.

Curiously, on a national level, metro area economic growth in toto between 2001 and 2010 and in 2010-2020 were about the same (17.12 percent in the former and 17.69 percent in the latter).  Further, on the whole, expansion in the six specific sectors examined (except for the contractionary arts cluster) was less dramatically different than in Buffalo and environs, too. Yet both income indicators increased significantly more slowly for all U.S. metro areas during that latter period, too, despite the slightly better economic growth.

Gauged by total income, the Buffalo MSA fell behind U.S. metro areas overall during both decades at about the same pace. Yet measured by per capita income, the Buffalo region generated modest catch-up during the stronger growth 2000-2010 decade but fell back during the much weaker growth decade that began in 2010. Could that be partly because its population rebounded, even modestly?

To me, the big picture looks like this: During the last decade, the typical Buffalo-nian somehow figured out better than the typical U.S. metro dweller how to generate considerably more income even though his region was producing goods and services at a considerably slower rate. That could account for the optimism expressed by so many in the city to the Times reporters. I just wonder how much longer they can pull this off?

Im-Politic: Crime Derangement Syndrome

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African Americans, Chicago, cities, crime, District of Columbia, gaslighting, gentrification, homicide, Im-Politic, inner cities, law enforcement, Mainstream Media, minorities, murder, policing, race relations, racism, Washington Post, white fragility, whites

If you still doubt that Mainstream Media coverage of the last year-plus’ national crime wave – which inevitably affects how Americans overall think about this issue – has gone completely off the wall, check out last weekend’s long Washington Post piece about the contrasting views of Black and White residents of the District of Columbia about homicides in city neighborhoods where they make up majorities.

I should actually say “supposedly contrasting views,” because there’s no reason to think that the opinions reported amount to a representative sampling of any segment of the public. In fact, it’s far more likely that these selected views reveal how this premier newspaper’s journalists (including of course editors) regard these matters.

Specifically, the article makes painfully clear how they and the rest of a disturbingly woke national media are now regularly turning cognitive somersaults in order to pin the blame for urban violence – which takes place overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods and claims overwhelmingly minority victims – on anyone except the criminals who overwhelmingly come from these same precincts. Heading this article’s list of the truly guilty are White Americans, who allegedly only care about such violent crime when it starts threatening them and their neighborhoods.

As written by authors Rachel Chason and Emily Davies (and approved by every editor with authority over the article):

“From the majority-Black neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River that have long been afflicted by gun violence to wealthier, Whiter parts of the city that have only sporadically experienced it, there is a sense that the issue is receiving more attention now in part because the violence is touching gentrified areas like 14th Street NW.”

Especially unhinged (or “less hinged”?) – the White residents so charged by the Post live in the District, which is one of the most Democratic Party-leaning areas of the country.

But don’t think for a minute that the Post believes this alleged hypocrisy is confined to the District. After all, this is a publication that since the May, 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis, Minnesota policeman has launched a big new news beat preachily called “Race and Reckoning.” And it’s no accident that this truly national newspaper, read assiduously throughout the D.C.-based federal government and broader national policy and political establishments – ran the article on the front page of its print edition.

The glaring irony should be lost on no one: There was actually no shortage of Americans who have been calling attention to the violence-prone nature of these minority neighborhoods and its causes for years before the Floyd murder, and who have continued to flag the issue since then. And whether they’ve been indisputably liberal or progressive (as was the case with former President Barack Obama) or, more recently, conservative, (see especially any number of episodes of the Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham talk shows on Fox News, or the years of studies by Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather MacDonald, or some of former President Donald Trump’s remarks), the reaction has been typically the same. They’re pilloried as fear-mongering racists. (See, e.g., here, here, and here.)

Another favorite response to decrying the so-called obsession with Black-on-Black crime: what can only be called gaslighting. My favorite example of such “Nothing to see here” claims came here in 2016, when an apologist for inner city crime (writing, not so coincidentally, in the Washington Post) went so far as to suggest that the idea of “war-torn” South Side Chicago was nothing but a myth.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that last week’s Post piece took gaslighting a big step further that was not only downright looney, but obviously racist – except to the hopelessly woke. It came in a description of a digital exchanges among residents of D.C.’s upper 14^th Street neighborhood (which has been rapidly gentrifying in recent years and recently was the scene of a shooting that stunned its newest, more affluent residents in particular) and the nearby Shaw district (in which gentrification has been slower). It’s worth quoting the Post‘s account of it in full:

In the conversation “about violence, rowdy behavior near bars, noise from ATVs, trash and illegal parking, [White 14th Street-er Jeffrey Willis wrote] ‘We have lost control of the streets here & apparently elsewhere’….

“Shortly after came a terse reply from a woman who said she grew up in Shaw and was angered by what she saw as a desire to over-police Black communities and a refusal to understand the Black culture long at the heart of Shaw.”

In other words, “violence, rowdy behavior near bars, noise from ATVs, trash and illegal parking” should now be seen as part of “Black culture.” In addition, it should be preserved against an onslaught of White Fragility. Now it’s always possible that this woman’s frustrations about inherently difficult changes in residential patterns momentarily overcame her common sense, and that she didn’t really mean to praise such behavior. It happens to everyone. But it’s still remarkable, and in my view revealing, that her claim went utterly without comment in the Post.

Although its origins are fuzzy, I’ve always thought that one of the most compelling ideas ever advanced is the contention that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Last week’s Post piece, and the overall direction of American thinking on race, racism, and crime, makes clear that the only thing necessary for the triumph of arrant, dangerous, and indeed racist claptrap to triumph is for sensible folks to respond just as passively.      

Im-Politic: New York City Shows How Not to Fight Crime

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African Americans, cities, crime, Im-Politic, inner cities, New York City, progressives, The New York Times, urban poverty

I gotta tell ya – nearly a week days later, I’m completely gobsmacked by the following paragraph in a June 30 New York Times article on New York City’s newly approved budget:

“To address a rise in shootings and homicides that have plagued the city since the pandemic, the city will spend $24 million to provide job training and support services to 1,000 people who are most at risk of participating in or being a victim of violence in neighborhoods including Brownsville, Brooklyn; South Jamaica, Queens; and Mott Haven in the Bronx.”

Granted, the spending barely moves the needle in the $98.7 billion plan for municipal outlays. But assuming the description is accurate, it’s difficult to imagine a program so deeply, and indeed tragicomically, weird in so many ways – not to mention one that so strongly reenforces doubt that the kinds of liberals and progressives who run cities like New York have a clue how to deal with crime. If your imagination is failing you on this score, ask yourself:

>The city is going to identify residents “who are most at risk of participating in…violence” in these crime-ridden precincts? Based on what? If the main or a major criterion concerns prior criminal records, including the commission of violent acts, what’s the rationale for putting any of these individuals ahead of anyone who’s “at risk of…being a victim of violence”? Like it’ll be tough to find 1,000 of these?

>If prior records aren’t being used, or prioritized, what other considerations will help decide who’s “most at risk of participating in…violence”? Are city officials going to seek out youngish African American and Hispanic men? That sounds like endorsing harmful racial stereotypes to me. Will they poll these or other residents and ask which ones are considering “participating in…violence”? And if they do, what happens to those respondents who raise their hands but aren’t selected? Do they get profiled by the police? Moreover, doesn’t that clear risk mean that few if any criminals-to-be are likely to come forward to begin with?

>As suggested above, the city is spotlighting these neighborhoods because crime is so widespread. So in principle, all adult residents are seriously at risk of “being a victim of violence.” But common sense indicates that the elderly and/or are likeliest to be targeted by thugs. Make that a double, lots of evidence indicates, for elderly Asian-Americans. Are many of them going to be channeled into job training programs?

>More fundamentally, helping the genuinely disadvantaged deserves applause. But when it comes to reducing violent crime, what’s the point of providing job training to its likely victims? They’re – obviously – not the ones prone to pulling triggers.

Unless maybe the assumption is that the populations of violent criminals and likely victims of violent crime overlap a lot (say, because gang members could easily fall into both categories)? But if so, to a great extent we’re back to the formidable-at-best challenge of reliably identifying likely violent criminals.

The city could have avoided all these questions – and the potentially fatal problems they spotlight – by simply announcing that the $24 million would be spent on creating more jobs and economic opportunity overall, and/or on improving education and other social services in crime-ridden neighborhoods. It could have even added that teenagers and young adults will be the focus – to increase the odds they’ll become success stories – and maybe that they’d be chosen by lottery or some other objective system.

Not that success would be guaranteed. But the outcome would doubtless be better than what New Yorkers evidently can expect (at least according to The Times description): token expenditures guided by nothing more than the most fatuous sort of good intentions.

Im-Politic: Biden’s Latest Americans Last Immigration Policy

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America First, Biden, Border Crisis, border security, Central America, Chobani, cities, corruption, crime, El Salvador, foreign aid, gang violence, governance, Guatemala, Honduras, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, inequality, Kamala Harris, Mastercard, Microsoft, migrants, Northern Triangle, racial economic justice, urban poverty

As known by RealityChek regulars, I’m deeply skeptical that the Biden administration can bring migrant flows from Central America (or similar regions) under control by adequately improving the miserable local conditions that (understandably) drive so much flight northward to begin with. But the first detailed description of this policy that I’ve seen not only ignores all of the intertwined institutional, governance, and cultural obstacles to turning regions like Central America’s Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) into even approximations of success stories. It also casts real doubt on the seriousness of the vaunted domestic social justice and inequality commitments made both by President Biden and by at least some of the U.S. corporate sector.

As argued by a White House Fact Sheet released yesterday, support for economic development in these long-impoverished, abusively ruled countries will “require more than just the resources of the U.S. government.” Also essential “to support inclusive economic growth in the Northern Triangle” will be the “unique resources and expertise” of the private sector.”

It’s true that only three completely private, profit-seeking American companies have responded so far to the “Call to Action” for business involvement issued by Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s the administration’s designated czarina for dealing immigration-wise with the Northern Triangle. But let’s say lots more get involved.

Why would anyone capable of adult thinking believe that their efforts will succeed? After all, the administration acknowledges that economic success in the region depends on overcoming its “long-standing impediments to investment-led growth.” And it specifies that these obstacles include governments that simultaneously either can’t or won’t carry out their duties in corruption-free ways, and are unable to provide minimal levels of security for their populations against criminal gangs.

Meaning that private businesses will be keen even on setting up the kinds of training and business incubator and internet connectivity programs that predominate in their Northern Triangle plans while threats of violence and extortion remain omnipresent? Maybe they’re planning to cope by hiring massive  private security forces – but such precautions were never mentioned in the Call to Action announcement.

Just as important, here’s another major head-scratcher, especially given the flood of promises over the last year or so from U.S. business circles about promoting racial economic and financial equality. If companies are willing to wade into dangerous environments to educate populations, build or strengthen the infrastructure needed for significant economic progress, and foster new businesses in Central America, why aren’t they focusing their efforts on America’s own inner cities, or at least focusing more tightly on these efforts first? It’s not like their needs aren’t pressing. And although the Northern Triangle countries have actually made some noteworthy progress in fighting violent crime lately, they’re still much more dangerous places than even most of America’s homicide capitals.

Consequently, for companies concerned overall with actual results, it would make far more sense to take an America First approach. Not that Microsoft, Chobani, and Mastercard have ignored their disadvantaged compatriots in practice. But even as their U.S. efforts remain pretty modest (Microsoft, e.g., to date has only launched its digital skills and access improvement program in Atlanta and Texas, and Chobani’s incubator program still seems pretty small scale), they’ve decided to head south of the border(s).

Incidentally, the entire Biden Central America and overall immigration policies are vulnerable to a similar criticism. Since however difficult it’s going to be to spur racial and other economic and social progress at home, the challenge will be far more difficult in foreign countries, a President truly committed both to these vital domestic goals and to staunching migrant flows would focus focus his economic development programs on his own country, and deal with the migrants as an immigration issue – by securing the border. Unfortunately for Americans, Joe Biden has been anything but that President.

Im-Politic: Time for an America-First Asylum Policy?

Tags

asylum seekers, Central America, cities, crime, El Salvador, election 2020, FBI, Golden Triangle, Guatemala, homicide, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, migrants, murder, New Nationalism.com, Robert Claude, Trump, WorldPopulationReview.com

One of Joe Biden’s central campaign promises has been to reverse Trump administration moves to curb most forms of legal and illegal entry into the United States by migrants from abroad, and one of the biggest complaints he and other supporters of loosening all forms of immigration restrictions has concerned the Trump policies toward those seeking asylum.

In particular, these critics of the President’s charge that the administration has unjustifiably, and even cruelly, restricted the grounds for a valid asylum claim to the longstanding criteria of persecution or fear of suffering persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, “membership in a particular social group,” or “political opinions.” Among the circumstances the administration was overlooking, as the former Vice President’s website explains, has been was the recent outbreak of gang violence in Central American countries that has supposedly forced numerous residents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras in particular to flee northward for their lives.

As a result,, Biden has pledged to “restore our asylum laws so that they do what they should be designed to do–protect people fleeing persecution and who cannot return home safely” – including expanding the definition of persecution to include (among other threats) victimization or fear thereof of gang and other major criminal violence.

I’ve backed the Trump stance out of concern that such changes would trigger a completely unabsorbable flood of asylum-seekers and recipients who would be granted entry for reasons having little or nothing to do with longstanding U.S. definition of asylum grounds, and prevalent in every country on earth — and everything to do with an understandable but much less dramatic quest for higher living standards.

So I was grateful to Robert Claude, who puts out the very fine New Nationalism blog, for pointing out to me this past weekend an item he posted over the summer pointing out that several American cities recently have suffered from murder rates that actually are as high or even higher than those of major cities in those three Central American countries (which collectively are called “The Golden Triangle).

Because Robert’s figures only went up to 2017, I decided to investigate a little further. And lo and behold – as of full-year 2019, the story remains the same.

It’s important to note that not all major American cities are Central America-like homicide hotbeds. But significantly, four are. Here are the numbers for murders (and other “non-negligent homicides” for the United States) – drawn from the latest of the FBI’s annual U.S. crime reports, from local news organization accounts for cities not included in the FBI surveys, and from the worldpopulationreview.com website. The figures represent murders etc per 100,000 inhabitants:

San Salvador, El Salvador: 59.1

Guatemala City, Guatemala: 53.5

Tegucigalpa, Honduras: 48.0

St. Louis, Missouri: 64.54

Baltimore, Maryland: 58.27

Birmingham, Alabama: 50.51

Detroit. Michigan: 41.45

Moreover, some U.S. cities are uncomfortably close to Central American murder levels. They include Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana (31.72 and 30.67, respectively), and Kansas City Missouri (30.49).

Some caveats are important. Each of the Central American cities is considerably larger than the American murder capitals – and scale may affect murder and other crime rates. Moreover, the three Central American cities cited are all national capitals. There’s evidence that in smaller cities in the region, the murder rates are somewhat higher. And it bears observing that the U.S. figures are all for the relevant cities proper. For Tegucigalpa, the numbers may include suburbs. The coverage for the other two Central American cities wasn’t specified.

At the same time, even though most U.S. cities are still much safer than most of their Central American counterparts, keep in mind the trends. For many of these U.S. metropolises, the murder rates have gone up so far this year. According to the U.S. State Department agency that monitors crime and safety conditions generally for U.S. travelers, the murder rates for each of the three Golden Triangle countries (data by city isn’t reported) have fallen substantially in recent years. (See here, here, and here.)

The murder rates in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are still horrific. But so are those for the four U.S. cities with comparable problems — and for those urban centers which aren’t much safer. Which at least logically raises a big question for the Biden-ites if they win the White House: If they’re determined to permit foreigners to come to the United States for fear of getting murdered, would they give Americans facing the same problems the same right, including the same forms of resettlement assistance?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Signs that the Jobs Recovery is Reversing

Tags

cities, Employment, Jobs, Labor Department, recovery, unemployment rate, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As the 2016 presidential election rapidly approaches, broad consensus seems to exist that the U.S. economy has done a good job creating more employment as the current recovery has proceeded, but that progress has been notably uneven. New figures from the Labor Department confirm the latter belief, but continue posing a challenge to the former.

Each month, Labor issues numbers on how many American metropolitan areas have seen their jobless rates go up on an annual basis, how many have seen them fall, and where the situation is unchanged. A few months ago, I reported that the number of these city and suburb combinations with falling jobless rates looked to be shrinking considerably, and the number where unemployment was rising was growing. Today’s statistics from Labor (for August) show that the situation has worsened further.

That month, jobless rates rose year-on-year for 123 of the 387 metro areas tracked, and fell for 242. The jobs picture was unchanged in 23. That’s a noteworthy deterioration from the statistics I last examined, for April. Then, unemployment rates rose year-on-year in 94 of the 387 metro areas, fell in 296, and stayed the same in 24.

In fact, the August numbers are the worst proportionately since January, 2013. Then, jobless rates rose in 124 of the 372 metro areas Labor was tracking at the time – or 33.33 percent. This past August, the 123 jobs laggards represented 31.78 percent of the 387 areas currently monitored.

It’s still possible that these August numbers are outliers. The May and June numbers, after all, were more comforting. (I couldn’t find the July figures.) But think about how long the current recovery has lasted (more than seven years). Then think about how low overall national unemployment has fallen. (It peaked at 10 percent in October, 2009 and stood at just 4.9 percent in August, the last data month we have,) That’s why it’s getting tough to imagine realistically that the number of American urban areas with rising jobless rates won’t keep rising itself.

And for you RealityChek regulars, I’m still waiting for those furshlugginer final presidential debate TV ratings!

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: An Historically Uneven, as Well as Sluggish, Recovery

Tags

cities, inequality, Jobs, Labor Department, recovery, unemployment, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As the late, great comedian Rodney Dangerfield might have said, this current U.S. economic recovery “don’t get no respect,” and dissing it seems to grow ever more popular. Long derided as historically slow, and marked by marginal wage increases and lousy productivity, it’s now coming under fire for being shockingly uneven as well, confined to a handful of (admittedly huge) urban islands of prosperity like New York City and Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area.

This morning came worse news – the gap between haves and have-nots is getting wider, at least when it comes to unemployment rates. This depressing conclusion – after nearly nine years of economic expansion – stems from the latest Labor Department data (for April) on joblessness and how it’s changed in 387 American urban areas.

But let’s start at the beginning (of the recovery). In June, 2009, unemployment rates rose year-on-year in all 372 of the metro areas then measured. So there was literally no place to go but up. But by February, 2010 – when the number of total American job-holders bottomed in absolute terms – unemployment rates were still increasing on an annual basis in 347 of these areas and falling in only 21.

This April, the situation was greatly improved. Unemployment rates dropped in 269 metropolitan areas and were up in only 94. (By now, the number of urban areas tracked has risen to 387.) But here’s the rub. The previous April, jobless rates were down in 344 areas and up in 36. In April, 2014, the numbers looked even better – down in 357, up in a mere 12. (In some areas, the rates haven’t changed.)

An optimist (or an Obama-phile) could argue that progress in cutting unemployment is slowing because the rate has already come down so dramatically during the recovery. And indeed it has – from the most recent peak of ten percent in October, 2009 to five percent in April. So clearly, there isn’t much more to go until any reasonable definition of full employment (which BTW, isn’t hard and fast).

At the same time, as RealityChek has reported so often, other measures of the employment scene, like wage and broader pay growth, still look pretty shaky. And heading into its eighth year, the recovery is looking pretty long in the tooth. The economy has so far displayed the ability to generate more impressive employment than growth results (hence, in a nutshell, the crummy productivity improvement), so it’s entirely possible that even when the recovery peters out, the number of jobs can keep increasing.  Therefore,however unsatisfactory the geography of prosperity these days, it may not get significantly worse for the time being.

But that’s likely a best case. If today’s growth shifts into reverse to any meaningful degree, America’s islands of prosperity could become even harder to find on a map.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Crucial Details on the U.S. (and Heavily Female) White Die-Off

Tags

2016 election, Angus Deaton, Anne Case, cities, coal, death rates, Donald Trump, health, Jobs, manufacturing, mortality, mortality crisis, Populism, rural areas, small towns, Trade, wages, whites, women, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Everyone should be grateful to the Washington Post for following up – in heart-breaking detail – on one of the most tragic and important stories of our time: the mounting mortality crisis among working- and middle-class middle-aged white Americans. At the same time, the Post‘s findings raise as many questions as they answer, significantly complicating the story – and the challenge of reversing these dismaying trends.

This white mortality crisis, you’ll recall, first broke into the news last fall, when Princeton University economists Angus Deaton (the latest Nobel prize winner) and Anne Case published a report solidly documenting the trend and linking it to growing economic insecurity combined with ever more paltry pension plans. Deaton and Case noted pointedly that, although other high-income countries, especially in Europe, had also experienced financial crises, productivity slowdowns, and widening inequality, the worsening white death rates in the United States, which provides fewer social and retirement protections, were unique. The authors also suggested that declining economic expectations hit white Americans’ psyches especially hard, and that non-whites, whose expectations were never as high to start with, found harder times easier to cope with.

As observers – like yours truly – noted, the implications for American politics seemed profound. In particular, I wrote, the Deaton-Case results indicated that outsider Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was more on-target than even he suspected when he kept complaining that America was getting “killed” by job- and wage-killing trade policies. And in fact, a strong relationship between rising white mortality and resurgent U.S. populism was made clear by the Post last month, when it found a high correlation between concentrations of the mortality problem and support for Trump.

Today’s report, however, adds crucial details indicating that other factors may be at work as well. One such finding: that “the most extreme changes in mortality have occurred among white women….” Women, after all, haven’t suffered nearly as much manufacturing job loss as men – whether it stems from trade policy mistakes or other causes (like factory automation). At the same time, since so many women have entered the U.S. workforce in recent decades – as manufacturing employment has faced more trade and technology pressure – they could well be affected indirectly by industrial job loss, as laid off manufacturing workers had to start competing for jobs in service sectors where women were more numerous.

Also muddying the picture is the big (and overlapping) rural-urban white health divide found by the Post (with “rural” including “small-town America”). In important ways, this geography of the white mortality crisis is consistent with the trade and manufacturing-centered interpretation. As is known by anyone who has traveled extensively around the “rust belt” or the American South, lots of factories have been and still are located in small towns and semi-rural areas, in part because land is cheap.

And reinforcement for this view is found on this map accompanying the Post article.

So many of the orange-brown and dark grey areas in the map on left — which signify counties and regions with the fastest rising white female mortality rates — are places like southern Michigan (think “auto industry”), northern Ohio (autos, steel, and industrial machinery), northwestern Indiana (steel), north central and western New York State (industrial machinery, heating and cooling equipment, railroad equipment, steel), and the Carolinas (where the plunge in textile and furniture jobs hasn’t nearly been offset by newer – often foreign – investments in sectors like aerospace, automotive, appliances, and electronics assembly). (The map on the right shows counties and region where white female mortality is falling.)

Nonetheless, so many of the biggest orange-brown stretches are regions dominated by other parts of the economy. Clearly, the coal industry’s woes bear lots of blame for the mortality crisis in Kentucky, southern Ohio, and West Virginia. And Nebraska, the eastern half of Utah, and the western half of Kansas have never been manufacturing strongholds (though Wichita has long been a major aerospace center).

The variety of local and regional economies involved shouldn’t be surprising. Anything as big as a mortality crisis in such a large segment of the population is bound to have multiple causes – and to resist talking-point-deep explanations and slapdash remedies. But that doesn’t mean the mainstreams of the two major parties shouldn’t be addressing the rapidly deteriorating health of so many Americans much more comprehensively and energetically.