Pittsburgh: highest growth in real GDP per capita in "midwest" (York: 2009, unemployment rate)

[BrianTH]

I thought this was interesting:

The Urbanophile: Midwest Metro GDP, Unemployment

The author uses recently released metro area GDP data to calculate growth in real GDP per capita for twelve "Midwest" cities (including Pittsburgh) from 2001 to 2008 and ranks them:

Pittsburgh 10.9%
Milwaukee 7.6%
Minneapolis-St. Paul 7.6%
Cleveland 6.0%
Chicago 5.5%
Kansas City 5.1%
St. Louis 5.1%
Louisville 3.8%
Cincinnati 1.7%
Indianapolis 1.7%
Columbus 0.6%
Detroit (2.0%)

The author is piggy-backing on these efforts:

The Bellows » The Output Effects of Migration (wonkish-ish)

The same number for some other cities drawn from that second link:

New York 18%
Los Angeles 17%
Washington 15.2%
Dallas 5.1%
Houston 3.6%
Phoenix 2.8%
Raleigh (3.7%)
Atlanta (6.0%)

Pittsburgh would no longer be #1 on that list, but it would be doing pretty good.

However, it is important to note that Pittsburgh still ranks below average in real GDP per capita, despite the recent gains. And as the first author touches on a bit, undoubtedly contributing to Pittsburgh's recent gains in real GDP per capita have been the out-migration and mortality of the excess older population that was left in the area when the steel bust disproportionately drove away younger people. Those people were likely depressing Pittsburgh's per capita GDP figures, so as they are gradually being removed from the mix, Pittsburgh's per capita GDP figures will naturally come back up.

Still, if you are looking for evidence that Pittsburgh is transforming itself economically as it finally recovers from the steel bust, this is some of the most basic you could find. More generally, as the second author points out, these numbers raise some interesting issues about migration, including whether more robust in-migration is necessarily a good thing. As I would put it, population booms will more or less automatically add to the size of the local economy, but whether they will improve the quality of the local economy depends on how that population boom is affecting the local economic mix. And it looks like in some cases, that affect hasn't been particularly positive.

[Nebat]

That's great! Except Pittsburgh isn't the mid-west. It might be close but isn't. Ditto on Louisville.

[Fiddlehead]

Interesting,but a bit mindboggling too. Yes, the sunbelt has been booming for years on one level. but the influx of snowbirds, along with the immigration issues, seem to have mixed effects. I would expect it would depend upon the relative skills, dynamism, of those coming and going. I would wager that that is hard to measure and analyses might have racist or other overtones. With good or bad folks being typecast. We see it now with "good schools" and "bad schools" becoming code for proportions of minorities. Although in many cases, such differences are backed up by hard testing data, in others I think it is a value judgment. Not sure if I wandered off the thread here, but these issues seem to be related to your closing comment above.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Nebat

That's great! Except Pittsburgh isn't the mid-west. It might be close but isn't. Ditto on Louisville.

Yeah, the first author is being generous on his definition of "midwest", but I do think it can make sense to compare what I call "interior" cities in this way.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

Interesting,but a bit mindboggling too. Yes, the sunbelt has been booming for years on one level. but the influx of snowbirds, along with the immigration issues, seem to have mixed effects. I would expect it would depend upon the relative skills, dynamism, of those coming and going. I would wager that that is hard to measure and analyses might have racist or other overtones. With good or bad folks being typecast. We see it now with "good schools" and "bad schools" becoming code for proportions of minorities. Although in many cases, such differences are backed up by hard testing data, in others I think it is a value judgment. Not sure if I wandered off the thread here, but these issues seem to be related to your closing comment above.

It is indeed a tricky subject to discuss. From a cold-hearted economics perspective, the best thing for a locality to do is to basically de facto cherry-pick the most educated and/or skilled immigrants, because they will very likely contribute positively to the local economy. With lower-educated/skilled immigrants, the economic impact is much more of a mixed bag historically.

Now I personally think that at least in theory, one can state that economics point without getting into ethnicity issues, but of course in the real world that distinction is rarely preserved for long. Personally, I very much believe that holding aside the economics, more ethnic diversity tends to be a good thing for the quality of life in a locality. And there is also a basic social justice issue: whether or not it would be better economically for the current residents of some localities to keep out lower-educated/skilled immigrants, I believe there is a basic human right to seek out better outcomes for yourself and your family through migration to places with better economic opportunities.

Anyway, I hope that makes my personal feelings clear, but I again agree it is a tough issue to discuss.

[Fiddlehead]

Ann Arbor, MI would seem to support all your general points. It is quite diverse culturally, but without a doubt has attracted the brightest from many places. It has a much lower unemployment rate than the rest of the state.

A covarying factor, that is just plain luck for them, though, is the fact that public sector is so large, and the university, medical center, etc. are fairly buffered against the immediate business challenges of the state, at least in the short-term. I would suspect that as unemployment goes up, college enrollment does too! Pittsburgh is a much more complex story, I am sure.

[BrianTH]

Yep, Ann Arbor would be a great example of an ethnically-diverse place that has also benefited economically from attracting international immigrants. Of course the problem is scaling that up from a college town to a full-size city, let alone the entire nation, isn't really feasible.

Interestingly, Pittsburgh is basically following that model a bit recently: although we don't get much immigration as a percentage of the total metro population, the immigrants we do get average relatively high in terms of things like education, and undoubtedly that is in part because they are being attracted in part by the universities, hospitals, tech companies, and so on . . . what I think of as the college town embedded in Pittsburgh. Again, though, how to scale that up much beyond the current level of immigration in Pittsburgh is quite a difficult problem, and maybe not a solvable one.

[pman]

if Pittsburgh produces jobs it will have immigrants

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by pman

if Pittsburgh produces jobs it will have immigrants

True, but the nature of the jobs will help determine the kind and relative number of immigrants.

There is also a fairly well-documented effect whereby immigrants tend to go to places where there are already a substantial number of immigrants from the same country. Obviously this is not a completely rigid rule, but it does mean that it can take a while for immigration patterns to respond to new economic opportunities.

[Tiger Beer]

That is something that surprised me about Pittsburgh, there seems to be NO dominant group that is attracted there. For example, HMONG to Minneapolis, LEBANESE to Detroit, etc. I wish there was some interesting group going to Pittsbugh, but there doesn't seem to be at all.