The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland just released a report showing economic data from Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Cincinnati. The idea was to track how these three cities are recovering from the recession.
Here’s the three area’s employment rates, before the recession and currently.
So Pittsburgh is the big outlier here. It’s recession was way less bad than the other two cities, in terms of unemployment and it’s back to pre-recession levels, something the other two cities are nowhere near. The Federal Reserve researchers do note that Pittsburgh’s employment appears to have leveled off, unfortunately.
Pittsburgh’s unemployment is better than the state and nation, while Cleveland and Cincinnati’s are much worse.
One thing Cleveland researcher Joel Elvery (an old professor of mine) notes, is that Cleveland’s employment rate has been growing at a pretty healthy clip lately. That is a big relief, he says, because after the last recession, around 2001, the local economy never really recovered the lost jobs. He said this was due to growing demand for exports and recovery in manufacturing.
One other thing that the Fed said that was interesting about Cleveland is that one of the fastest growing sectors this year has been hospitality — because
of the casino they said and new hotels.
What’s interesting to note also though is that GDP has mostly recovered for Cincinnati and Cleveland but employment hasn’t kept pace. These are GDP:
Even Pittsburgh, GDP is still growing strong, but employment has leveled off.
— Angie Schmitt
