Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There were about 800k more people in Chicago back then than now. There were more jobs in Chicago back then than now.
Yes, and there were 800k more people, so obviously there were more jobs. That's like saying there's more jobs in LA than Seattle - well of course there are - there's way more people in one city versus the other. The more important thing to look at would be unemployment percentage. Yes, unemployment rate was less in 1970 than it is now by a few percentage points but raw count in this case doesn't mean as much since the populations are so different.
Yes, and there were 800k more people, so obviously there were more jobs. That's like saying there's more jobs in LA than Seattle - well of course there are - there's way more people in one city versus the other. The more important thing to look at would be unemployment percentage. Yes, unemployment rate was less in 1970 than it is now by a few percentage points but raw count in this case doesn't mean as much since the populations are so different.
The unemployment rate is only way to look at who is "out looking for work".
The labor force participation rate gives a much better sense for who truly "not working".
National labor force participation is trending in a disturbing way --
Economists from the Chicago Federal Reserve have been at the forefront of showing how these trends, which are particularly troubling for males of low educational attainment, will snowball -- https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/p...n-etal-pdf.pdf
The labor force participation rate gives a much better sense for who truly "not working".
Yep, this is true. I'm actually not sure of how Business Insider/BLS is accurately getting monthly data about the number of 16+ year olds since these numbers aren't necessarily published, especially every month. The closest thing we have is the yearly ACS. I guess there's other ways to predict it but still not totally accurate.
In any case, luckily for Chicago, the July 2015 count of employed persons in the city is the highest it's been since July 2001.
Location: East Central Pennsylvania/ Chicago for 6yrs.
2,535 posts, read 3,281,063 times
Reputation: 1483
Is Chet still trying to prove Chicago is the 7th most expensive city in world...still? Or Back to the Usual bash anything and All things in Chicago? From Young Urban Professionals to You name it...
It is REALLY REALLY BAD WHEN EVEN... Nola101 has to correct Chet.... well after all we have to give him a break... I saw in this above Post .. A POSITIVE... . He posted this....⤵
In any case, luckily for Chicago, the July 2015 count of employed persons in the city is the highest it's been since July 2001.
[quote=NOLA101;41464104]There were about 800k more people in Chicago back then than now. There were more jobs in Chicago back then than now. The ghetto neighborhoods were much smaller back then. So your story about people being scared going more than four blocks from the lake sounds absurd.]
Maybe I was getting bad information, but I was a University of Chicago student so I was getting it from white people with professional jobs. I realize that the white working class neighborhoods were healthier then and have gotten poorer and more dangerous, and that the ghettoes expanded tremendously before they started contracting. I hate to bring race into this but it's Chicago we're talking about, and the reality is that dangerous white neighborhoods disappeared after the Great Depression.
There were about 800k more people in Chicago back then than now. There were more jobs in Chicago back then than now. The ghetto neighborhoods were much smaller back then. So your story about people being scared going more than four blocks from the lake sounds absurd.
Maybe I was getting bad information, but I was a University of Chicago student so I was getting it from white people with professional jobs. I realize that the white working class neighborhoods were healthier then and have gotten poorer and more dangerous, and that the ghettoes expanded tremendously before they started contracting. I hate to bring race into this but it's Chicago we're talking about, and the reality is that dangerous white neighborhoods disappeared after the Great Depression.
The relative isolation that UofC somewhat encourages even today is largely a product of the urban violence erupted during the late 60s / early 70s. Though the scars of that violence do remain nearly 50 years later, the true extent of the actual threat to safety was rather limited geographically.
That said the attitudes / behaviors that were triggered are still shaping Chicago and even the suburbs. While the common terminology is often referred to as "white flight" what is more striking is the segregation by income and social stratification. If one looks at where city workers lived back in late 50s / early 60s there would have been a pretty even distribution based on rational factors like distance to their primary work location and general housing costs. There were nearly no concentrations of city workers clustered at the edges of the city. Lots of city employees lived where they grew up, whether that was Back-of-the-yards or Lakeview Now you'd be hard pressed to find a cop, firefighter or even Streets & San worker that does not live in block where the majority of neighbors are co-workers.
Another by-product of this sort segregation is a contraction of the places that once were acceptable suburban options -- the biggest negative has been the fall off of UofC employees commuting in from the Flossmoor area, but really all the S/SW suburbs have seen shifts in demographics that are rather different than in Western / Northern / NW suburbs.
The photo I posted earlier struck me because of how many signs were posted loudly proclaiming a need for workers. I well remember just how labor intensive all kinds of traditional office settings were -- there were huge pools of workers, almost always women, that wrote out memos and letters dictated by their almost exclusively male superiors. Those stenographers then would spend huge effort in typing pools preparing drafts for the bosses to approve. Once approved the important documents would be reviewed by other layers of managers. The correspondence that dealt with any financial information or ongoing contracts was then laboriously filed and cross referenced by others. The volumes of paper physically moving around the downtown offices was mind boggling. Throw in things like the paper invoices, checks, tax forms and similar "transaction documents" and it was no wonder that ambitious people in the mail room (that really was sort of a precursor to the "enterprise service bus" of the digital age...) could, by carefully scanning all the paper that they touched, eventually learn enough to move to the executive suite...
It should come as no surprise that even otherwise open-minded professional that routinely saw headlines, photos and the much more limited "mobile minicam" coverage of riots that basically overnight drove out generations of shop keepers from the south and west sides to react to the perceived threat. Add the media focused on the conflict surrounding events like Democratic National Convention (cue Richard J. Daley -"The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder."
Read more at The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder. - Richard J. Daley at BrainyQuote ) really fanned the fears that violence was everywhere.
Reality was quite different. Many good, hardworking people that served in the US military during WWII worked in the numerous factories, warehouses, materials yards that were common in Chicago still had A LOT of their working years ahead of them. As they moved to places like Elk Grove Village and the other industrially focused suburbs that sprung up along the NW tollway so too did the employers rapidly abandon Chicago for "Mad Man Era" sites in the suburbs. Work itself become much more segregated.
The stats pretty clearly bear out that as employment in Chicago's northside industrial areas dried up in the late 70s / early 80s the rise of crime was all but inevitable. Coupled with the untimely transition to inexperienced politicians like Bilandic, Bryne, and Washington the actual crime levels peaked.
The relative isolation that UofC somewhat encourages even today is largely a product of the urban violence erupted during the late 60s / early 70s. Though the scars of that violence do remain nearly 50 years later, the true extent of the actual threat to safety was rather limited geographically.
That said the attitudes / behaviors that were triggered are still shaping Chicago and even the suburbs. While the common terminology is often referred to as "white flight" what is more striking is the segregation by income and social stratification. If one looks at where city workers lived back in late 50s / early 60s there would have been a pretty even distribution based on rational factors like distance to their primary work location and general housing costs. There were nearly no concentrations of city workers clustered at the edges of the city. Lots of city employees lived where they grew up, whether that was Back-of-the-yards or Lakeview Now you'd be hard pressed to find a cop, firefighter or even Streets & San worker that does not live in block where the majority of neighbors are co-workers.
Another by-product of this sort segregation is a contraction of the places that once were acceptable suburban options -- the biggest negative has been the fall off of UofC employees commuting in from the Flossmoor area, but really all the S/SW suburbs have seen shifts in demographics that are rather different than in Western / Northern / NW suburbs.
The photo I posted earlier struck me because of how many signs were posted loudly proclaiming a need for workers. I well remember just how labor intensive all kinds of traditional office settings were -- there were huge pools of workers, almost always women, that wrote out memos and letters dictated by their almost exclusively male superiors. Those stenographers then would spend huge effort in typing pools preparing drafts for the bosses to approve. Once approved the important documents would be reviewed by other layers of managers. The correspondence that dealt with any financial information or ongoing contracts was then laboriously filed and cross referenced by others. The volumes of paper physically moving around the downtown offices was mind boggling. Throw in things like the paper invoices, checks, tax forms and similar "transaction documents" and it was no wonder that ambitious people in the mail room (that really was sort of a precursor to the "enterprise service bus" of the digital age...) could, by carefully scanning all the paper that they touched, eventually learn enough to move to the executive suite...
It should come as no surprise that even otherwise open-minded professional that routinely saw headlines, photos and the much more limited "mobile minicam" coverage of riots that basically overnight drove out generations of shop keepers from the south and west sides to react to the perceived threat. Add the media focused on the conflict surrounding events like Democratic National Convention (cue Richard J. Daley -"The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder."
Read more at The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder. - Richard J. Daley at BrainyQuote ) really fanned the fears that violence was everywhere.
Reality was quite different. Many good, hardworking people that served in the US military during WWII worked in the numerous factories, warehouses, materials yards that were common in Chicago still had A LOT of their working years ahead of them. As they moved to places like Elk Grove Village and the other industrially focused suburbs that sprung up along the NW tollway so too did the employers rapidly abandon Chicago for "Mad Man Era" sites in the suburbs. Work itself become much more segregated.
The stats pretty clearly bear out that as employment in Chicago's northside industrial areas dried up in the late 70s / early 80s the rise of crime was all but inevitable. Coupled with the untimely transition to inexperienced politicians like Bilandic, Bryne, and Washington the actual crime levels peaked.
But what about the NW and SW sides? Seems to me that they've always been loaded with city workers..
But what about the NW and SW sides? Seems to me that they've always been loaded with city workers..
The older patterns used to be quite different. Once upon a time the literal "biggest politician in Chicago" was none other that Dan Rostenkowski. Though national reporters often say he was from the "NW Side" that is NOT Jefferson Park or Edison Park in terms of WARDS, it was the 32nd ward, which was the heart of the industrial area west of DePaul that is now remarkable for the degree it shopping areas along Elston & Clybourn resemble the strip malls of Schaumburg... How Dan Rostenkowski Gave Us Rod Blagojevich | NBC Chicago
As to what happened to the guys like Rostenkowski that were tied into to either / both Chicago manufacturing or city jobs, it was not a single factor. Part was a migration, not really that different than the flight that happened. Back before things started burning and there were "urban renewal" efforts the fringes of city were not nearly as concentrated with city workers as they have become. In the older neighborhoods there might have been a cop every block or two compared to now, where parts of Garfield Ridge are almost wall-to-wall city workers. That sort of segregation contributes to a whole host of problems, including the lopsided crime numbers for areas that are not home to many cop, an "us vs them" mindset that undoubtedly makes excessive force more common / hard to investigate, and lack of decent role models if the areas that could most benefit from some law and order...
The fact that all the city workers and CPS teachers are required to live in the city has also contributed to the hardline negotiation stance that they take when union contracts are worked on -- the costs for covering things that city workers largely feel are necessary, like private school tuition, is basically "baked in" and contributes to the relatively high compensation that is demanded...
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Only part of the story...
. He posted this....⤵
I remember it well. 
He drove up and down Belmont Ave.
