Buffalo in the middle
A new report from the eggheads at the Brookings Institution gives Buffalo a gentleman's C for economic health. We stand near the top on stats such as homes retaining their value and staying out of foreclosure -- no small accomplishment these days. But Buffalo, along with the rest of Upstate New York, scrapes the bottom on metrics such as wage growth, employment and economic output.
As outlined in today's Buffalo News article, Going beneath the hood, the Brookings findings support the arguments being made by the leaders of the University at Buffalo that education and medical services -- Eds and Meds to folks in the biz -- are the future.
The Brookings summary is here.
The full MetroMonitor report is here.
And the video is here:
Remembering that all news is local, here are takes on the same info from The Express-News in top-ranked San Antonio and The Oklahoman in runner-up OKC. It was played up big in The Omaha World-Herald, which compared the Brookings picture of the American economy to a good baseball team - with strength up the middle.
The story was also picked up in The Virginian-Pilot, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Sacramento Bee, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, The Houston Chronicle and The Columbus Dispatch, which works in a dig at income taxes but curiously fails to explain why the Ohio capital and home of Ohio State University does so well -- Eds, Meds and Government.
There were write-ups in The Miami Herald and in Jacksonville's Florida Times-Union, where many cities are near the bottom. But I found no mention of the report in either The Detroit Free Press or The Detroit News, which serve the city that came in last. Maybe that's more bad news than they can handle.
-- George Pyle/The Buffalo News
