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
Page 13 of the Metro Monitor report shows the Buffalo area's percent loss in GMP (gross metro product) from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009, minus 1.8%, was the 12th worst out of the top 100 U.S. metro areas. Or an optimist might prefer to say it's the 89th best out of 100.
Metro Buffalo's employment loss of 2.2% on page 5 was the 8th worst (or 93rd best) out of 100.
Posted by: Renaissance | June 17, 2009 at 02:09 PM
Okay, so we're in the middle 20 on the list of cities: what does that get us?
Posted by: Buffalo Libertarian | June 17, 2009 at 04:23 PM
Not all of upstate "scrapes the bottom." Rochester is in the top 20, proving once again that Buffalo should be forging closer ties with it's upstate neighbors.
Posted by: john | June 30, 2009 at 07:03 AM