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I’ve never understood the fixation with population growth. Thereare more people than jobs in 2015, especially at the lower end of thesocioeconomic spectrum, which to me means that perpetual growth isunsustainable. Many of the industriesthat once provided gainful employment for the unskilled or less educated are goneand unlikely to ever return. I’ll leavethe research to someone else, but I’d bet most of those leaving fall into thiscategory, so it doesn’t seem like the worst thing for these people to seekopportunities elsewhere.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases their Occupational Employment Statistics for May of every year. May isn't available yet for 2015, but 2014 is. Here's a look at the biggest winners and losers between May 2012 and May 2014 for the MSA. Keep in mind, some of these industry types are very broad and have a lot of sub categories within them. I'll probably look later into the more granular level to see what at each industry type are the biggest winners and losers.
Employment Biggest Gainers (by raw number): 1. Transportation and Material Moving Occupations: +29,930 jobs2. Management Occupations: +25,320 jobs
3. Computer and Mathematical Occupations: +18,750 jobs
4. Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations: +18,420 jobs
5. Office and Administrative Support Occupations: +13,610 jobs
Employment Biggest Gainers (By Percentage Change): 1. Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations: +75.14% ---> Very small to begin with
2. Computer and Mathematical Occupations: +17.62%
3. Personal Care and Service Occupations: +15.05%
4. Management Occupations: +11.33%
5. Transportation and Material Moving Occupations: +10.57%
Employment Biggest Losers (By raw number): 1. Education, Training, and Library Occupations: -16,840 jobs
2. Construction and Extraction Occupations: -10,040 jobs
3. Sales and Related Occupations: -8680 jobs
4. Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations: -1300 jobs
5. Healthcare Support Occupations: -1250 jobs
Employment Biggest Losers (By Percentage Change):
1. Construction and Extraction Occupations: -8.78%
2. Education, Training, and Library Occupations: -6.25%
3. Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations: -2.57%
4. Sales and Related Occupations: -2.13%
5. Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations: -1.53%
Mean Annual Wage Biggest Winners 1. Construction and Extraction Occupations: +$9300
2. Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations: +$5310
3. Management Occupations: +$3680
4. Protective Service Occupations: +$3520
5. Architecture and Engineering Occupations: +$2950
Mean Annual Wage Biggest Losers 1. Legal Occupations: -$12,000
2. Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations: -$2380
3. Education, Training, and Library Occupations: -$1920
I’ve never understood the fixation with population growth. Thereare more people than jobs in 2015, especially at the lower end of thesocioeconomic spectrum, which to me means that perpetual growth isunsustainable. Many of the industriesthat once provided gainful employment for the unskilled or less educated are goneand unlikely to ever return. I’ll leavethe research to someone else, but I’d bet most of those leaving fall into thiscategory, so it doesn’t seem like the worst thing for these people to seekopportunities elsewhere.
There will always be more people than jobs.
I don't know what you mean by "perpetual growth is unsustainable". Why is it "unsustainable" for a metro area to grow? Chicago has been growing perpetually basically since inception. Isn't it more "unsustainable" when areas have underused infrastructure, like you see on the South and West Sides?
And the economic data has already been posted. Chicago isn't losing "unskilled or less educated". That's the constant refrain being used when boosters are being confronted with population data. "Yeah but it's just poor ghetto dwellers on the South Side" is the basic premise (again, not supported by the economic numbers; Chicago's economic growth has been lagging for some time now, and still hasn't matched the pre-recession jobs totals, while the U.S. as a whole passed that milestone years ago; and local income growth has also been relatively slow).
^ Keep in mind that the data posted is for the MSA, not the city and the industries posted are very broad. For example, The Management industry type has 33 sub-industries under it. The General/Operations Manager subtype increased by 12,560 jobs in the MSA between 2012 and 2014, but at the same time in the same parent industry type, the Public Relations and Fundraising Managers subtype decreased by 280 jobs.
I think in the city, the types of jobs that Chicago has been losing are more manufacturing jobs, but that's not necessarily unique to Chicago. A lot of cities have seen that happen. As the economy continues to recover and people make more money, some people have more reason to open up new businesses in the restaurant, bar, store category. The city has seen a number of new eateries open in the 2nd half of 2015 for example, many more than a year ago. These requires a good number of "unskilled" labor still, which is why Serving related jobs from the data I posted above was #4 in overall jobs added in the MSA region most likely.
Much of the growth in Chicago, the city, is centered around services related jobs (i.e. consulting) and tech jobs. A lot of the new construction seen in certain areas are due to the emergence and healthy growth of the entrepreneurial tech scene and all the jobs associated with that whether it's software development, sales, management, creative, etc.
Whether someone is skilled or not - that's another story. Just because you are working as a server at a restaurant doesn't mean you are just as unskilled as someone else. That is another story - OES does not measure who has a college or associate's degree in each industry.
Last edited by marothisu; 12-28-2015 at 02:44 PM..
I don't know what you mean by "perpetual growth is unsustainable". Why is it "unsustainable" for a metro area to grow? Chicago has been growing perpetually basically since inception. Isn't it more "unsustainable" when areas have underused infrastructure, like you see on the South and West Sides?
And the economic data has already been posted. Chicago isn't losing "unskilled or less educated". That's the constant refrain being used when boosters are being confronted with population data. "Yeah but it's just poor ghetto dwellers on the South Side" is the basic premise (again, not supported by the economic numbers; Chicago's economic growth has been lagging for some time now, and still hasn't matched the pre-recession jobs totals, while the U.S. as a whole passed that milestone years ago; and local income growth has also been relatively slow).
So you really think the labor market is no different now than it has ever been? What a privileged existence you must lead.
Regarding sustainability, you’d be right if the growth was taking place in the South and West Sides where vacant land and buildings could be refilled/replaced/renovated, but largely it’s not. If the growth occurs in the periphery, it’s likely to be sprawl. As for the growth downtown and in vibrant North Side areas, then it’s unsustainable to the extent that the amount of free space will eventually run out, unless literally every residential building is a high-rise.
As for the demographics of those leaving, I don’t have the patience to search for the data so repost it if you like. Regardless, I never meant to imply the “ghetto dwellers” (again you sound like an overprivileged suburban white girl but I digress) are the *only* people leaving. Of course Chicago, like many other cities, has had its middle class eviscerated, and it may be more acute there thanks to the city and state’s financial situations. And of course older people are also leaving for warmer places like AZ. However, that doesn’t mean poorer people aren’t leaving as well (to the extent they can afford to leave which obviously excludes the poorest people).
Further, nobody on this board would call me a booster. In fact I’d probably be labeled the opposite by a number of people who post here simply for acknowledging the city’s problems. You, however, must be the most miserable person on this board to be so fixated on a place you clearly hate. Get better.
So you really think the labor market is no different now than it has ever been? What a privileged existence you must lead.
The U.S. labor market is quite strong. Unemployment is half that of most first world countries. Incomes are rising, job growth is strong, inflation is low. There are employee shortages in most technical fields.
But you are free to ignore economic data and to manufacture your own worldview.
There are employee shortages in most technical fields.
And many companies are definitely hiring right now for these jobs in many cities. As someone who does hire/interview people for technical jobs, I don't think there's necessarily a shortage - but at the same time people are a little pickier about who they want to hire right now for the jobs. In the end though, we have never really not had many people apply. We have always had a big pool to choose from of those who apply.
A lot of companies keep ramping up their offerings though and continue to open up new job opportunities. I'm not sure if I'd call it a shortage - at least what I've experienced in both my employer and my clients.
Here you go. Chicago distinguishing herself yet again. Per Brookings, we are the most segregated metropolitan area, and in Chicago, only white incomes are rising...
Anyone with an IQ higher than a 2x4 could see the social problems from segregation coming starting about 30 years ago. Getting rid of some of this segregation is what really would create a stronger Chicago, not simply pushing the segregated and isolated out of the City.
Here you go. Chicago distinguishing herself yet again. Per Brookings, we are the most segregated metropolitan area, and in Chicago, only white incomes are rising...
Anyone with an IQ higher than a 2x4 could see the social problems from segregation coming starting about 30 years ago. Getting rid of some of this segregation is what really would create a stronger Chicago, not simply pushing the segregated and isolated out of the City.
With segregated schools you can bus kids around. With segregated neighborhoods what do you propose? Forcing people to move into areas where they'd be non-majority?
Chicago is not particularly more segregated than other large northern cities. Western cities and Sun-belt boom towns are less segregated because so much of their grow happened post-civil-rights era. Parts of Chicago that are least segregated today tend to be areas that are gentrifying. If you really wanted to speed up desegregation, you'd have to enable gentrification is solidly minority areas and there are really two ways to do that: 1) get, and keep, crime down in minority areas with high crime and 2) make sure that those areas have excellent transportation to jobs centers. If you do those things, places will eventually gentrify. But it takes decades, sometimes generations, for gentrification to really take hold.
The other way you can do it is to place micro-public-housing units in areas that will statistically result in some amount of integration. That can be tricky, though, politically because even people who are objectively not racist, can be stridently classist.
Parts of Chicago that are least segregated today tend to be areas that are gentrifying.
Not sure I agree with that totally. Downtown is certainly less segregated than it once was, but still is majority white.
On the flip side though, the parts of town that seem to be less segregated, at least from what I see and my data (https://www.google.com/fusiontables/...l-8QQ#map:id=4), are neighborhoods that are relatively safe but also relatively inexpensive - Albany Park, West Ridge/West Rogers Park, Edgewater, parts of Rogers Park, Irving Park, North Park, Hyde Park, parts of Irving Park, and maybe parts of an area like Bridgeport, etc.
In my opinion, the one thing that is holding Chicago back from experiencing the type of growth that some other cities are experiencing is the crime thing. We all know that parts of the north side/downtown are doing well, but I can't tell you how many times I've read in the news about families moving from the city because of the violence in parts of the S and W sides. I think the city is lucky right now to have growth going on economically because if it didn't, we would see an overall decrease of population (maybe not a big one, but still a decrease).
Not sure I agree with that totally. Downtown is certainly less segregated than it once was, but still is majority white.
On the flip side though, the parts of town that seem to be less segregated, at least from what I see and my data (https://www.google.com/fusiontables/...l-8QQ#map:id=4), are neighborhoods that are relatively safe but also relatively inexpensive - Albany Park, West Ridge/West Rogers Park, Edgewater, parts of Rogers Park, Irving Park, North Park, Hyde Park, parts of Hyde Park, etc.
In my opinion, the one thing that is holding Chicago back from experiencing the type of growth that some other cities are experiencing is the crime thing. We all know that parts of the north side/downtown are doing well, but I can't tell you how many times I've read in the news about families moving from the city because of the violence in parts of the S and W sides. I think the city is lucky right now to have growth going on economically because if it didn't, we would see an overall decrease of population (maybe not a big one, but still a decrease).
I guess when I say "gentrified," what I really meant to say is "gentrified or filled in with immigrants."
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