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The Detroit Metro actually has higher incomes than Orlando and Tampa, which are both really low wage cities by any standard.
The Orlando wage number is artificial. The overwhelming number of temporary theme park workers that get room and board is not taken into account. The average wage for a full time Orlando resident that is not a transient theme park employee, is inline with the national average. The quality of life reflects as much. The same is true in Tampa to a lesser extent, which also has a diluted number due to a higher number of retirees.
Regardless of what Detroit as a city was "used to", the recession almost eliminated 2/3rds of it's signature industry if not for government intervention. That would have sent the entire state of Michigan, and large swaths of the industrial Great Lakes into the stone ages. I'm not sure any city that was paralyzed by the housing bubble had to contend with that.
The Detroit Metro actually has higher incomes than Orlando and Tampa, which are both really low wage cities by any standard.
As with most cities, it depends on the industry. Average wages in tourism-fueled states like Florida are always skewed by the high volume of customer service based jobs; employment (or unemployment) figures as well. Employment in other fields tend to have numbers that more closely match nationwide averages.
The Orlando wage number is artificial. The overwhelming number of temporary theme park workers that get room and board is not taken into account. The average wage for a full time Orlando resident that is not a transient theme park employee, is inline with the national average. The quality of life reflects as much.
That's false, it's actually quite accurate. The median salary in the Orlando metro area is less than 35K per year as the lion's share of job expansion has been via part-time service sector jobs (versus full-time skilled employment opportunities), and am not sure what quality of life you speak of as the income inequality versus rental housing cost (more than the suggested 30% of income) has increased exponentially the past few years to the point where Orlando is considered among a handful of cities where the average marketplace rent has become unaffordable for most.
Detroit actually got hit hard throughout most of the 2000-09 decade, bleeding jobs prior to the recession when nobody else was. So the actual recession just made it even worse.
I'd say probably Las Vegas had the most shock value from the recession.
Not necessarily a "city," but we were hit really hard here in southern Appalachia. Mining and tobacco were historically big employers here, and both have been victim to changing market trends as well as political targets for the last decade or so. We also were heavy on manufacturing and that's gone down.
Charlotte suffered pretty bad. Things didn't start improving until around 2013. From 2009-2012 the economy there was absolutely abysmal. I lived there and would have loved to have stayed but I was working a dead-end job despite having a degree and things weren't getting any better. In hindsight, I wish I would have waited it out a little bit longer because things really started to pick up about six months after I left. I was much happier living there than where I live now.
NC was middle of the road with the recession. Some jobs were lost and the economy slowed but not like Florida, Detroit, the rust belt and especially Phoenix and Vegas.
Charlotte suffered because they built that city on banks and related industires. And well that was that.. They are finally starting to diversify the economy a bit. It reminds me of Houston both cities too big to be ALL banking or ALL energy/oil. Like they have been.
Orlando did get hit hard I can't imagine though that it suffered more than Detroit .
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