February 20, 2008
Educated (young) workers and regional growth
By Britton Lombardi, Associate Economist
As the U.S. continues to grow into a knowledge-based economy, human capital and ideas earn a higher premium. Therefore, competition for future economic growth and vitality leaves states and large metropolitan areas vying to attract and retain the young, well-educated population within the U.S., commonly defined as 25- to 39-year-olds with at least a bachelor’s degree. These young and educated adults have certain characteristics that make them particularly appealing to metropolitan areas, such as their especially high mobility and entrepreneurial tendencies.
Among a number of interested parties, policymakers, businesses, and researchers question what attracts these young professionals to certain areas over others. Some of the allure could come from characteristics that are specific to the individual, such as a job offer or personal relationships. However, Yolanda Kodrzycki of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, finds that these young professionals also exhibit certain general preferences. They gravitate toward areas that have high job growth, high average pay, and an array of employment opportunities where they feel possibilities and opportunities abound. At this point in their lives, they are the most flexible, and many may still be trying to choose a career path; therefore, a region that will allow them to explore many options is more attractive to these individuals. The payoff to successful “job matching” can be especially high for younger people because payoffs may accrue over a lifetime career supplemented with further learning and development. This implies that certain industry clusters may help attract specialized human capital to a location. A current trend going back two decades has been that cities with a strong technology industry have appealed to a disproportionate number of these young professionals. However, cities that have focused on other knowledge-intensive industries like finance and real estate have done well too. Metropolitan areas that value human capital and maintain a strong regional economy draw in these young and educated individuals.
Besides the direct advantages of high-wage jobs, the clustering of young professionals in an economy provides spillover benefits of knowledge and innovation through networks among firms and workers. Places such as the San Jose area are legendary for frequent job-hopping among workers, who thereby spread innovation more broadly. Such innovations typically involve tacit knowledge and know-how. Looking at patent data, Jerry Carlino has demonstrated how a higher density of skilled workers leads to a higher level of intellectual property.
Aside from economic opportunity, amenities offered by populous urban areas are also thought to attract young professionals. They often prefer to live in lively neighborhood areas within a few miles of the city center and take into account the affordability of this type of housing. Other amenities that appeal to this population include parks or other areas for walking and outdoor recreation, reliable public services including transportation, vibrant neighborhoods, and a dynamic commercial district. However, the extent to which these amenities matter remains the subject of debate and further study.
Warmer climate has been a magnet for the general U.S. population over recent decades. However, cold-weather cities can seemingly compensate with a combination of vibrant economic opportunities and/or big-city recreational and cultural features. The table below, for example, examines working age college-educated migrants from 1995-2000. Although the metropolitan areas that had the five highest net in-migration rates were located in the South and West, both the Minneapolis-St. Paul and Chicago areas posted relatively high net in-migration rates. Indeed, Minneapolis-St. Paul ranked among the top ten highest for that period.
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A recent discussion paper issued by the New England Public Policy Center further explores the regional concentration of young professionals using data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses and the 2005 American Community Survey (ACS).
The concentration of young, educated workers in any one region depends on the extent that its young residents achieve college education and the region’s ability to retain them, as well as attracting others from around the U.S. and abroad. As of 2005, New England had the highest concentration of young, educated individuals in the nation, with 38.6% of its 25- to 39-year-olds holding at least a bachelor’s degree compared with 30.1% for the U.S. (see table below). However, overall educational attainment in the U.S. increased between 1980 and 2005, especially between 1990 and 2005 when the number of college educated, 25- to 39-year-olds soared by 22%. The Middle Atlantic, East North Central, and South Atlantic regions outpaced New England’s rise, although they began with lower percentages.
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The discussion paper further calculates a net migration rate from 2004 to 2005. The rate takes the difference between the gross inflow and outflow of domestic young professionals in relation to the base population of that age group. Migration rates are calculated as described but multiplied by 1000 to make it a rate per 1,000 residents. Using this measure, only the Mountain, South Atlantic, and Pacific regions have positive net migration rates of 20.4, 10.9, and 1.0, respectively. The two Midwest regions, East North Central and West North Central, had the two most negative net migration rates of -9.5 and
Movements of workers to and from abroad have recently become a more integral part of regional work force composition. Using a similar calculation as above, but only accounting for international inflows due to data limitations, New England comes in second highest with international inflows of 14.4 behind only the Pacific with 17.4. The East South Central region reported the lowest inflow of these individuals with 5.1; West North Central comes in second to last with 7.9. The East North Central barely outpaces West South Central as the fourth and third from the bottom with 11.6 and 11.4, respectively. Again, the Midwest appears near the bottom of the rankings, heightening concerns about not only maintaining or attracting domestic young professionals but gaining international ones. In New England’s case, the net inflow of international young professionals seems to offset the region’s domestic losses, but this does not hold true for some of the other regions, including the Midwest.
Although emphasis has been placed on young professionals, the growth in older workers, those aged 55 and above, will be the largest of any working-age group over the next ten years. The older labor force is projected to grow by 46.7% from 2006 to 2016 — more than five times the projected annual growth rate of the overall labor force of 0.8%. This large projected growth rate results from the aging of the baby boom generation into their “golden years” and still participating in the labor force. Older workers may continue to work due to the removal of the earnings test from Social Security, the increased retirement age for receiving Social Security benefits to 67, decreased employer-provided retiree health benefits, and the improved health status of older individuals.
Another reason for employers and regions to focus on older workers stems from the diminishing education attainment gap between young entering workers and older workers. Dan Aaronson and Dan Sullivan document the dramatic overall rise in educational attainment of the U.S. workforce since the 1970s. Educational attainment has been climbing as younger (more educated) cohorts have been displacing older (less educated) cohorts as they retire. Today, younger workers are only as educated, on average, as those that they displace at the older end of the workforce, and their lesser work force experience may put them at a disadvantage in some respects. All the more reason for employers to turn somewhat to older cohorts for tomorrow’s needed work force skills.
As the number of older workers continues to increase, will firms and policymakers shift some of their attention to retaining or enticing these workers by giving them incentives to extend their careers or possibly return to the work force? Older workers offer benefits to businesses that might not be available from young professionals, such as leadership, experience, and specialized skills gained over their lifetime that can increase productivity and output. On the other hand, these older workers have characteristics quite different from those of young professionals. They tend to prefer more flexible work schedules to balance work and family and to be less mobile geographically. Therefore, they may require a slightly different and possibly more demanding set of economic incentives and living amenities.
Posted by Testa at 10:43 AM | Comments (1)
July 18, 2007
Automotive wages in flux
As the “Detroit 3” automotive companies have experienced shrinking profits and market share, many midwestern communities have experienced falling jobs, income, tax revenues and public services—to say nothing of the households and families working in the industry. This summer, automotive workers and communities are watching closely as the terms of automotive employment—especially wages—are being renegotiated. On July 20, for example, the UAW labor union opens contract negotiations with Ford and Chrysler (July 23 for General Motors) for contracts that will run for 4 years. And earlier this month, auto parts maker Delphi announced settlement terms with its workers as it undergoes operational restructuring. Only four Delphi production plants will remain in operation in the U.S. as its customers will source parts from its overseas operations or from alternative suppliers. Remaining Delphi production workers will be on the receiving end of cuts to health care benefits, employment security, retirement and wages. Wages for production workers will be reduced from $27 per hour to a maximum of $18, $14 for new hires.
How should we view the wage settlements as they are announced in coming months? One perspective is to compare them to average wages for production workers in U.S. manufacturing. Production workers are typically those who have few or no supervisory roles in manufacturing plants; in other words, most assembly line workers would fall into this category. The chart below displays average wages for production workers back to 1967. These wages represent the average in compensation for overtime and regular time. The wages are expressed in current dollars, adjusted over time for changing prices by the Consumer Price Index.
The bottom line shows that, across all manufacturing industries, average wages have remained largely flat since 1967, ranging between $17 and $20 per hour. Wages were rising until 1980. With several deviations, the average wage settled at $ 18.59 in 2005, which is the latest available data from this particular source.
In the same graph, we can see that that production workers in motor vehicle parts industries (blue line) have fared somewhat better over time, but that their wages have been converging with the remainder of manufacturing workers since the 1980s.
Workers in the automotive assembly industry (green line) are smaller in number than those in parts production. In the U.S., there are approximately three workers in parts production for every worker in an assembly plant. Unlike their brethren in parts production, assembly workers’ wages have been generally rising since 1967. By 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau reported an average production wage of $35.84.
The second graph below plots the premiums in wages for automotive workers. This premium is expressed as the percent by which wages exceed the average of all U.S. production workers across all industries. As of year 2005, the average wages of automotive assembly workers topped their counterparts by 50 percent. For motor vehicle parts workers, the wage premium has fallen below 20 percent from a peak of 31 percent in 1980. Approximately one-third of workers in the parts industry are represented by labor unions versus three-fourths of domestic assembly workers.
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Declining employment has accompanied softening wages in many instances. From a geographic perspective, declining automotive jobs is nothing new for many midwestern states and communities. The industry was highly concentrated in the Midwest throughout the first half of the twentieth century but afterward began to disperse—first to other U.S. states and later around the globe. Considering domestic employment in automotive parts and assembly combined, the next graph shows that the states of Ohio, Michigan and Indiana accounted for over three-fourths of automotive employment through World War II. By 2005, their employment share had fallen under one-half.
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During the current decade, the automotive job decline has been precipitous. The final graphic (below) indicates that the three-state decline in automotive jobs has fallen by almost one-third since year 2000, from 576,000 to 383,000 over the first half of 2007.
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The reasons for these employment declines are several.
As always, productivity gains are reducing the labor content in automotive production. Labor hours per vehicle assembled by the “Detroit 3” car makers, for example, declined from 24–28 hours in 2002 to 22–23 hours in 2006. Beyond assembly, estimates by Martin Baily of the McKinsey Institute and the Institute for International Economics report that labor hours to produce an auto in North America, including parts, are decreasing at an annual average of 1.7 percent annually since 1987, and are now approaching 100 hours total.
Globalization of production has resulted in both off-shore operations and competitive pressures on domestic producers. Since 1996, the import share of light vehicle sales has increased from 12 percent of sales to 20 percent, year to date. Approximately one-quarter of domestically used automotive parts are now sourced abroad.
Despite some periods of re-concentration over the past 2 decades and the siting of many new plants in various Midwest communities in recent decades, the overall industry continues to disperse to other states, especially in the South.
Note: Thomas Klier contributed to this entry.
Posted by Testa at 9:16 AM | Comments (0)
February 5, 2007
Michigan Labor Market--Still Awaiting Recovery
Following the 2001 national recession, the labor market remained somewhat slack and slow-growing until mid-2003. Subsequently, the national economy accelerated, pulling along labor demand and employment growth. The year 2006 marks the third consecutive year of strong year-over-year employment growth (and falling unemployment) nationally.
Meanwhile, the Seventh District, which includes the state of Iowa and most of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, also experienced an employment recovery. However, the pace of job growth in the Seventh District has fallen somewhat short of the nation over most of the post-recession period. From the fourth quarter of 2001 until the fourth quarter of 2006, payroll job growth is currently reported to have risen by 3.9 percent in the nation, versus 0.7 in the Seventh District states overall.
Much of the Seventh District weakness is confined to Michigan, and recent indications show little sign that the Michigan labor market performance is turning around. As illustrated below by a 3-month moving average of monthly unemployment rates, the U.S. and the rest of the Seventh District states (excluding Michigan) have reported a falling rate of unemployment over much of the past 3 years. Currently, the region’s unemployment rate lies very close to the nation at around 4.5 percent. In contrast, Michigan’s current unemployment rate, after improving in 2005, is now back where it was in 2004.
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Unemployment rates are not fool-proof indicators of labor market performance because they are conducted by household surveys which are subject to sampling bias. However, other independent indicators tend to corroborate these survey indicators. Among the other indicators, the survey of payroll employment at business establishments is reported for states by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It too is based on a survey, and it is revised later as more information becomes available.
Below, year-over-year growth in payroll employment is shown for Michigan versus the District and the U.S. The payroll survey suggests that Seventh District job growth, though slower than the U.S., has shown steady growth over the past three years. Michigan’s year-over-year job growth has continued to decline—at an accelerating pace.
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So too, reported information on initial claims for unemployment insurance by laid off (or otherwise severed) workers exhibits the same pattern: deterioration at an accelerated pace over the past three years in Michigan, and improvement outside the state.
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In past decades, weak automotive-related performance in Michigan has sometimes been appraised as temporary or cyclical. However, this time around, as indicated by labor market performance in surrounding states, weak economic performance in Michigan appears to reflect structural problems for auto makers and automotive supply companies. Since early 2004, Michigan has lost 17.6 thousand net jobs at auto assembly establishments (a 24 percent decline) and 27.5 thousand jobs in motor vehicle parts production (a 15.8 percent decline).
Overall domestic automotive production is being eroded by imports and by enhanced production and sales of transplant automotive companies who largely produce outside the state of Michigan. Recent employee buyout programs at Ford, General Motors, and Delphi will result in a head count reduction of nearly 100,000 across the U.S. Approximately one-third of those jobs are situated in Michigan.
At least for the near future, the Michigan labor market situations does not yet look to be improving. The Michigan-domiciled auto assembly companies foresee or have announced continued employment reductions and facilities closings in both production and in administrative/R&D employees. Longer term, the Michigan economy's sharp automotive concentration means that the labor market will continued to be driven by developments in the industry.
Posted by Testa at 9:14 AM | Comments (2)
September 28, 2006
Michigan automotive and white collar jobs
Loss of market share from the traditional Big Three automakers to global competitors has impacted Michigan’s economy, leading to some deep concerns about its future. To date, most attention to this issue has focussed on job loss related to automotive production activity. Auto assembly and parts production continues at a strong (though eroding) clip in the United States, but it is rapidly shifting away from Michigan. So far, the “new domestic” carmakers have avoided siting new production plants in Michigan, preferring to site them in the South, as well as in Ohio and Indiana, such as Honda’s recent announcement to build a plant in Greensburg, Indiana. However, another important employment component for Michigan also relates to the health and sales market share of the Big Three—that is, the nonproduction activities of these auto assembly companies. These activities include research and development (R&D), sales, finance, and management operations, which form an outsized economic engine for the state. In what ways does the survival (and growth) of Big Three companies go hand in hand with the nonproduction jobs located in Michigan?
Nonproduction employment of auto assembly companies typically amounts to a surprising 35%–45% of total employment and an even larger share of payroll. While Michigan is highly concentrated in automotive production—with 15 auto assembly plants—it is also the domicile of the Big Three's headquarters along with significant company R&D and other operations. For this reason, it is not surprising in Michigan to find that nonproduction automotive employment is more concentrated than elsewhere. In counting Big Three nonproduction employment at their production plants, headquarters, R&D centers, and other auxiliary facilities in Michigan, nonproduction employment likely outnumbers production employment, making up a minimum of 55%–60% of total Big Three jobs in the state.
Moreover, additional Michigan personal income and jobs are generated from local services purchased by headquarters-type operations. As Chicago Fed economist Yukako Ono has found in recent studies, headquarters operations often purchase key services for the entire company network. These purchases may include financial services, R&D, information technology (IT) products and services, strategic management consulting, and many more. From the regional economy’s standpoint, these purchases are often sourced locally to a large extent. In fact, Ono discusses the possibility that the choice of location by headquarters may be influenced by the cost and availability of such business services.
Similar behavior of automotive headquarters makes Detroit and its surrounding environs much more than just a factory economy. Specifically, much of the value of Big Three automobiles derives from product development and design, and most of that R&D activity is conducted in Michigan. As derived demand from the domestic automotive industry, key business services are largely produced in Detroit. My blog entry from August 16 shows that the Detroit metropolitan area far and away tops other midwestern metropolitan areas in its concentration of professional and technical services employment. Among Detroit’s top sectors are engineering services (employment at 51,594 jobs in 2002) and scientific research and development (18,126 jobs in 2002).
Nationally, much R&D is funded and performed by automotive companies and their affiliates. According to the most recent survey of industry funds for research and development, which is conducted by the National Science Foundation, the automotive industry accounts for $14–$15 billion in annual R&D funding in the U.S. To be sure, in recent years, as auto assemblers have increasingly relied on their first-tier suppliers for entire components and automotive modules, some significant R&D responsibilities have been shifting away from assembly companies and toward automotive parts companies. Still, today, the lion’s share of this R&D is performed in-house, that is, largely by auto assembly companies themselves.
These practices have kept Ford, General Motors (GM), and Daimler-Chrysler among the largest R&D performers in the U.S., with Michigan at the hub of such activity. For this reason, Michigan ranks second only to California in funds for industrial R&D. And for 2003 as the figure below shows, the motor vehicle assembly and parts industries in Michigan accounted for $10.7 billion of the $15.2 billion industry-performed R&D in the state. The ties between these expenditures and local employment is apparent. According to a parallel survey by the National Science Foundation, the Detroit metropolitan area employed 102,500 research scientists and engineers in 2003—a concentration of 5.2% of the work force as compared to 3.9% nationally.
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Would Michigan retain this important function in the event that Big Three sales shares continued to decline? On the positive side, there are some indications that the Detroit area’s role in automotive research is in the process of growing beyond its historic roots. For example, the “new domestic” automakers have all sited research, development, and design facilities in the Detroit region, such as Toyota’s recently announced $150 million R&D center investment in Ann Arbor. Others, such as Hyundai and Nissan, have also recently expanded their facilities or announced plans for similar expansions.
So, too, Detroit’s attractiveness to automotive company headquarters operations displays some sparks of growth. Major automotive parts producer Borg Warner moved its headquarters from Chicago to the Detroit area last year. More generally, Chicago Fed economist Thomas Klier has documented an upswing in auto parts company headquarters moving to Michigan. The presence and growth of automotive parts headquarters in Michigan probably bodes well for company-sponsored R&D activity as well.
Still, competitive challenges are at play both here and abroad. Domestically, figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show that the annual R&D funding in the U.S. by Asia-domiciled automotive companies, at $125 million, makes up a very small share of automotive R&D in the U.S., amounting to less than 2 percent. And while the Detroit metropolitan area has so far attracted many of these transplant R&D activities, historically, it is not uncommon to find that attendant service activities eventually follow production in manufacturing. In this direction, the movement of U.S. automotive production from the Midwest toward the South is drawing the attention of those seeking R&D activities as well. For example, Clemson University in South Carolina has launched a research program and industrial park to foster technology development and transfer in cooperation with companies such as BMW and others.
And so, Michigan has several important economic activities at stake amidst the current upheaval among automotive companies.
Posted by Testa at 1:00 PM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2006
Where is automotive employment in the Seventh District?
Perhaps the most notable economic development taking place in the Seventh District is the market shift away from the traditional "Big 3" domestic auto makers--General Motors, Ford, and (Daimler)-Chrysler--and their parts suppliers. Lost sales are shifting toward the "new domestics" such as Toyota and Nissan and their parts suppliers. The sales gainers tend to be located outside of the Midwest to a greater degree than the Big 3. This shift is documented and analyzed in a recent Economic Perspectives article by Thomas Klier and Dan McMillen. This market upheaval is tending to idle and displace workers in many Midwest communities. Per Klier and McMillen, Michigan automotive employment is down almost one-third since 1979 while southern states such as Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and the Carolinas have experienced a tripling of jobs.
But despite these shifts, Detroit and much of the Midwest continues to be the center of the production. Which particular communities remain most sensitive to future swings in automotive fortunes? The data below attribute automotive employment to particular metropolitan areas in the Seventh District. Those metropolitan areas with green shading had an employment concentration in automotive that exceeded the nation; those shaded in red had a lesser concentration. Looking across metropolitan areas in the entire Seventh District region, an east-west split in auto employment concentration becomes very apparent. The Michigan-Indiana corridor contains most of the metropolitan areas having an above-average concentration. Darkly-shaded metropolitan areas in southeast Michigan are exceptionally concentrated in automotive. So too, an east-west band of metropolitan areas across north central Indiana is steeped in automotive employment.
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A numerical listing of automotive employment below shows just how concentrated some communities can be. Metropolitan areas including Detroit/Livonia/Deaborn, Flint, Holland, Saginaw, Battle Creek, and Lansing/East Lansing in Michigan all reported concentrations over 5 times the national average, as did the Kokomo and Lafayette metro areas in Indiana.
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The final table below further illustrates the sharp geographic rift in employment fortunes over the 1990-2005 period. As a whole, the state of Michigan lost over 64,000 jobs in automotive, on net accounting for all job losses nationally. Largely due to the Michigan experience, the Seventh District states experienced an 18 percent decline in automotive jobs since 1990 while the remainder of the U.S. experienced a 3 percent gain in similar employment.
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Posted by Testa at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2006
Midwest labor markets: Not as bad as we thought?
By now, it is common knowledge that the Midwest labor market is softer, on average, than the rest of the nation. In our Seventh District states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the unemployment rate has been running one half percentage point higher than the nation for the past two years. Reported payroll job growth has been running poorly as well—at approximately one-half the national rate. The Midwest’s manufacturing sector has also been weak, dragged down by ongoing restructuring among domestic car makers and parts suppliers.
This March, a glimmer of better news was delivered by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, who rebenchmarked revised monthly state payroll job numbers back from December 2005 to January 2004. The BLS rebenchmarks the employment data each year to take into account more comprehensive data that becomes available on the number of jobs in each state.
Recent revisions boosted the two-year growth of total employment for the Seventh District, while the U.S. was revised downward slightly. The chart below displays revisions by state from the fourth quarter 2005 back two years to the fourth quarter of 2003. After revising District jobs upward by 78,000 for the fourth quarter of 2005, job growth was found to be 1.5% versus 1.0% prior to revision. U.S. payroll jobs were revised downward slightly (by 158,000). Even after this convergence, the pace of reported job growth for the District lies at one-half the national pace!
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On the beleaguered manufacturing side, favorable revisions were repeated. District manufacturing jobs were revised upward by 13,000 for the fourth quarter of 2005, which raised the pace of decline from a 1.2% decline to a 0.7% decline. For the U.S., revisions eliminated 54,000 jobs, and lowered the pace of growth from –0.3% to a 0.7% decline, thereby matching the District pace over the two-year period.
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In may seem incongruous that pace of the the District’s manufacturing sector matched that of the U.S., while the District’s total employment growth was only one-half of the U.S. This results from the fact that manufacturing jobs are much more concentrated in the District—by about 43%. A falloff in District manufacturing activity is also keenly felt across service sectors such as transportation and distribution.
Considerable statistical noise remains in these numbers. Next year, the payroll numbers will be revised once again, and these revisions will include the fourth quarter of 2005. This means that the payroll job performance reported here will also be revised. Stay tuned.
Posted by Testa at 2:15 PM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2006
Midwest payroll job growth—Turning but weak
Sample-based estimates of payroll employment are among the most prominent and timely indicators of regional economic performance. Recent trends in reported payroll data indicate lagging economic performance in the Seventh Federal Reserve District, which comprises all of Iowa and major parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan , and Wisconsin . Payroll job growth over the past year varies among these states, with losses in Michigan pulling down the District’s job growth average.
The District’s payroll job performance during the period following the 1990 national recession compared much more favorably to that of recent times. Have the region’s fortunes temporarily turned for the worse? Or is this lagging performance an indication of a structural worsening in the region’s growth path?
Payroll job estimates for December 2005 were released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on January 24, 2006. While these figures seemingly complete the calendar year 2005, they have not been finalized yet. When the January figures are released (every March), monthly data are revised back for the previous 18 months. Because current data are based on reports from a sample of establishments, the data are later revised or benchmarked to a so-called universe of establishments that report their employment covered by the Unemployment Insurance tax system. The revisions can sometimes be significant and we will examine them during the week of March 6.
Over the past year, this preliminary data suggest that payroll job growth is trending up in all District states except Michigan. However, job growth continues to lag the nation in all District states except Iowa.
Looking back over the past five years to one quarter prior to the onset of the last national recession, there have also been steep job losses. The table below indicates that Michigan’s monthly average payroll jobs declined 6.7% from the fourth quarter of 2000 (prior to the onset of the national recession) to the fourth quarter of 2005. Reviewing payroll jobs data over this same five-year period for other Distict states and the rest of the nation, we can see that there was a 2.8% loss in jobs for the average of all five District states and a 2.2% gain for the remainder of the U.S.
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Such performance is in sharp contrast to results from the previous national recession of 1990–91 and its aftermath. During that five-year period, starting from the national peak quarter, 1990:Q3, District employment expanded by 7.8 percent versus 7.0 percent for the rest of the U.S. At that time, stronger than average payroll job growth emerged in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Is the region experiencing a structural change, that is, a performance indicating deep-seated conditions that cannot be expected to reverse themselves? During the early 1990s, several transitory events and conditions were playing to advantages of the Midwest, as well as to the disadvantages of other regions. Among these were the savings and loan crisis and subsequent restructuring that affected parts of the South, the Northeast, and the West, but largely bypassed the Midwest. In addition, the build-down in national defense procurement, along with base closings, diminished income in jobs in some parts of these other regions. So, too, exports were growing and import competition was abating nationwide, following the easing of the dollar’s exchange rate during the late 1980s. In this regard, the high concentration of manufacturing in the Midwest was especially favored by a improving balance of trade.
Manufacturing employment performance generally appears to have been a key factor. In both the nation and in the Midwest, manufacturing employment remained generally buoyant during the 1990s. Since manufacturing was (and remains) so much more concentrated in the Midwest than throughout the rest of the U.S., this sector’s impacts on overall growth were magnified in Seventh District. Moreover, job expansion in District manufacturing actually surpassed the nation. The table below reveals that manufacturing jobs grew over 3% in the Seventh District from the third quarter of 1990 to the third quarter of 1995, whereas it declined by 4% in the nation over these five years.
In the more recent period, 2000–05, manufacturing jobs have declined steeply in both the Seventh District and the rest of the nation; both are experiencing manufacturing job declines at a pace of 17% to 18% during this recent five-year period.
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Have structural changes taken place recently in the Midwest involving manufacturing? We cannot say with certainty. Our examination of the manufacturing sector in 2004 established that manufacturing’s job share displays a long-term and sustained decline in the U.S. so that the region’s recent weakness is not necessarily a permanent turn for the worse (link).However, it is also clear that the automotive industry is undergoing some profound geographic shifts, which do not favor the Midwest (link), and that import competition also looms as a possible contributor to domestic automotive parts travails (link).
There is much that we do not know yet. Still, as the Seventh District crosses the mid-decade mark, with its lagging performance showing little sign of abatement, it is time to raise questions and to analyze the extent to which the region’s growth path has changed.
Posted by Testa at 4:34 PM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2006
Bullish on the Chicago Metropolitan Economy
So far this decade, the Chicago metropolitan area's economic performance has been disappointing. As in the surrounding Midwest, job declines during the recent recession were worse here than in the nation as a whole, and this area’s job growth during the expansion has since been lagging. With this lackluster performance, there has been a special disappointment for Chicagoans; the metropolitan region’s economy led the nation and most of the surrounding Midwest during the 1990s. During that time, there was a sense that Chicago’s economy had evolved beyond its role as regional business capital into one as national and global business center.
What is Chicago’s outlook for 2006? I am optimistic, although there are some defensible reasons for caution. For one, goods producing industries in the surrounding region may continue to pull down Chicago’s service sectors. Chicago’s outsized business and professional service sector continues to serve the Midwest, as do its travel, distribution, and business meeting services. But looking ahead, the Midwest economic outlook is clouded by the prospects for its automotive industry. Nationally, automotive sales growth is not expected to be robust this coming year, especially for the Big Three automakers and their suppliers that populate the eastern part of the Midwest region as well as northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Accordingly, this segment of the Midwest cannot be expected to propel Chicago’s service economy in 2006.
There is a second reason to be cautious: National economic growth is expected to moderate modestly in 2006 (link). Since Chicago and the Midwest generally follow national trends—perhaps even follow them in a magnified fashion—there is some doubt that the metropolitan economy’s performance will gain momentum as the national economy moderates.
Still, despite these trends, and with a great deal of uncertainty, I offer some reasons for optimism for those of us who are inclined to be bullish about Chicago.
Not all of the surrounding Midwest manufacturing activity is moribund. The region’s capital goods industries, such as the machinery and equipment industry, are expanding. Looking forward, as national and global economic growth continues, U.S. and world demand for “new tools” and added production capacity tend to lift capital goods sectors. In turn, employment in manufacturing sectors, along with physical expansion of factories, tend to take place with a lag as excess capacity becomes squeezed.
More generally, recently reported data indicate that improvement in Chicago’s labor markets is already underway. During the autumn, Chicago's year-over-year payroll job growth exceeded 1 percent for the first time since the year 2000, while the unemployment rates were down in the fourth quarter (according to preliminary reports).
Chicago’s vaunted business and professional services industry is once more reporting strong employment growth. Though it has much catching up to do from its poor performance in recent years, Chicago’s year-over-year job growth in this sector is exceeding the nation’s.
In the travel and meeting arena, passenger arrivals to the Chicago area and hotel demand continue to recover. Plans for local conventions have edged up for 2006, as have planned developments of new hotel space.
Chicago’s financial exchanges also form a bright spot. Chicago’s importance as a financial center is defined by its exchanges and associated dealers and brokers. The Chicago exchanges can claim close to two-thirds of the volume of exchange-traded contracts in the U.S., and they once dominated global trading as well (link). However, in the 1990s, competing exchanges in Europe and Asia made strong gains in global market share, depressing the metropolitan area’s income and employment. But recently, Chicago’s two major exchanges, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, have rebounded strongly. Not only are contract volumes up markedly, but both exchanges have gained market share on their global competitors over the past two years.
Chicago’s central area remains head and shoulders above all mid-continental contenders as a magnet for attracting younger skilled workers. Such workers are now greatly coveted for regional growth and development. A recent study of the 40 major U.S. metropolitan areas reported that Chicago’s downtown ranks sixth in the share of 25–34 year-olds, and Chicago experienced the third greatest percentage gains in this group (up 28%) during the last decade. Chicago’s downtown has the second highest share of residents with bachelor’s and advanced degrees with 67.6%, only behind Midtown Manhattan (link).
The Chicago area manufacturing sector was hit hard in the early years of the decade, especially in its own high tech hallmarks of IT and telecommunications manufacturers, such as Tellabs and the much larger Motorola. Thankfully, the region’s machinery and equipment sectors have bottomed out because national investment spending has recovered, growing at double-digit rates in 2004 and 2005. Such strong national demand for equipment and software is expected to continue into 2006.
In the high tech start-up arena, a flurry of activity took place in the Chicago area at the end of the last decade. Chicago’s timing was very unfortunate in this regard, coming in at the national peak of activity such that the Chicago region suffered greatly through the subsequent collapse. Now, however, the region’s technology businesses appear to be gathering steam once again for another push at realizing the metropolitan area’s full potential for technology start-ups. Positive developments include the Technology Development Fund of the Illinois Science and Technology Innovation Campus in Skokie, Illinois, and the research park expansion planned by the Illinois Institute of Technology. Tech commercialization policy initiatives are also moving forward. To name but a few of many, the Chicago Biomedical Consortium will be sharing new medical research equipment among Chicago area institutions, and the Midwest Research University Network will be cooperatively fostering start-ups out of Midwest universities and research labs.
The Chicago area economy has not been fortunate in recent years. Its economy is driven by its business service and headquarters functions; its role as distribution hub of the Midwest’s goods and materials; and its business travel/meeting activity. These sectors have been buffeted by weakness in the surrounding regional economy and, more globally, by weakness in manufacturing and business travel/meeting activity. Recent trends portend that Chicago’s performance will catch up with the nation’s somewhat in 2006.
Posted by Testa at 5:55 PM | Comments (0)
December 1, 2005
Great Lakes: Economy and water
The Council of Great Lakes Governors convenes December 13, 2005, in Milwaukee. At that time, the governors will discuss progress on region-wide procedures to regulate, protect, and control diversions of the waters of the Great Lakes basin, the largest single body of surface water in the world. Such actions are laudable for their foresight in sustaining the health of the Lakes ecosystem. Interstate cooperation in fashioning public policy is difficult and rare. Inspired by such achievements in the environmental arena, should the region’s leaders aspire to broader cooperation to spur economic growth and development?
The Council of Great Lakes Governors, formed in 1983, is a non-partisan partnership of the eight states that border the Lakes—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—along with the Premiers of Ontario and Quebec. The council's goals are both environmental and economic.
Next week’s agreements to address water diversions are but one of several initiatives that the governors are engaged in to improve the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem. Through the Great Lakes Governors’ Priorities Initiative, the council has established a list of nine priorities to guide the restoration and protection of the largest single source of freshwater in the world, the Great Lakes. Most of these priorities are being addressed more broadly in the U.S. by the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, which was created by executive order in 2004. The collaboration includes the EPA-led federal agency task force, the Great Lakes states, local communities, Native American tribes, non-governmental organizations and other interests in the Great Lakes region. The first goal of the Collaboration is to create a workable strategy to restore and protect the Great Lakes ecosystem. Past abuses of the Lakes include the introduction of invasive species, destruction of sensitive shoreline habitat, and the introduction of persistent toxins and pollutants. Today’s threats include increased demands for consumptive uses of Great Lakes water; pollutants from land, sea, and air; erosion of coastal habitat through onshore development; and imminent introduction of invasive species such as the Asian carp.
Should similar interstate cooperative efforts be marshalled for economic growth and development? Some limited efforts are being taken already. Through the Council of Great Lakes Governors, a group of five of the Great Lakes states maintain a non-competitive partnership in international trade initiatives. Five states share overseas trade offices that offer responsive and comprehensive services to small and medium sized companies seeking to expand product and service sales.
In addition, one might argue that proper stewardship of the watershed itself is highly important to the economy. Regionwide organizations such as the Great Lakes Commission address the use of the waters for maritime transportation and tourism-related activities. A Council of Great Lakes Industries tries to preserve the region’s industrial activity and balance the needs of industry with those of the environment.
The Lakes ecosystem is also important to what the region's economy is becoming. Quality of life, especially human health and outdoor recreational amenities, are increasingly important in attracting the highly skilled and highly mobile knowledge workers of “the information economy.” As family income and educational attainment grow in the U.S., demands for environmental quality grow more than proportionately. Primary residences adjacent to scenery and open waters are in ever greater demand. More people are buying second and even third homes for vacation and retirement. A small but growing subset of households follows the seasons residence by residence suggesting that, over time, the Great Lakes attractiveness as a site of seasonal homes is likely to expand.
Still, as we stand at mid-decade, the Great Lakes economy appears to have lost some steam from ten years ago (chart and table below). At that time, the region was celebrating a return to prosperity from the tougher times of the 1980s (see Assessing the Midwest Economy project of Fed). Labor markets in the mid-1990s were tighter in the region than the nation, with concerns of work force shortages about to emerge.
Click to enlarge images.
Since 1995, the region's payroll employment has grown by one-half of that of the rest of the U.S., and the region’s unemployment rate is higher than the nation. Over the past five years, payroll job growth has declined.
The region may yet flex its economic muscles during this decade. But concerns are growing that the region's economy may again be undergoing some long-term structural declines. As they meet in Milwaukee, some of the governors may rightly wonder if additional interstate efforts to boost the region’s economy might be worthwhile.
Aside from the waterways, the region’s economy is highly integrated in commerce and in shared assets, among them interstate flows of materials and intermediate parts over a common transportation network (see Hewings CFL). The region’s economy also draws from a common labor market for its work force skills. And its built assets include a university system that is arguably among the finest of any region in the world.
While it is highly important to protect our natural assets, other opportunities for the Governors may lie in developing and promoting additional assets.
Posted by Testa at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2005
Driving Indiana’s and Michigan’s Economic Performance
The Midwest economy is lagging the U.S., but some states are doing better than others. These differences may help us understand the reasons for the region’s lagging economy.
Last week in Indiana, I presented some evidence that the entire region is growing more slowly than the nation. Payroll job growth in our Seventh Federal Reserve District is up only 0.6% for September from one year earlier, versus 1.6% in the nation. In some respects, this performance is not surprising since, nationally, manufacturing jobs are still declining (down 1% year over year through September), and the Midwest’s economy is steeped in manufacturing. In addition, the region’s economy is bogged down by the structural change taking place in the automotive industry. Foreign nameplates continue to gain market share from the domestic automakers (previous blog). Since the foreign nameplate companies and their parts suppliers tend to locate in the South, jobs and income are seeping away from the Midwest.
In this regard, comparing the performance between Indiana and Michigan is telling. Though both states rank among the top 3 nationally in manufacturing concentration, the unemployment rate in Michigan stands at 6.1% in Michigan (Oct.) versus 5.4% in Indiana. Year over year, manufacturing payroll job growth is virtually flat in Indiana, but down over 3% in Michigan.
Click to enlarge.
The economies of both states are automotive intensive, but Michigan to an even greater degree. Indiana’s automotive share dominates manufacturing inside the state, at 16%. But Michigan’s automotive sector accounts for 35% of its manufacturing employment. A weakening automotive sector, then, would be felt more sharply in Michigan.
On top this, the auto sector’s performance in Michigan has been worse. From 2001 to date, automotive jobs have fallen 24% in Michigan, compared to 8% in Indiana.
Indiana’s automotive performance is buffered by having a larger share of foreign auto parts and auto assembly plants than Michigan. According to senior economist Thomas Klier, 29% of automotive parts plants in Indiana are foreign owned, as are 2 of its 3 auto assembly plants.
Auto parts makers tend to locate close to their customers. In Indiana, the foreign-owned parts plants are more likely to supply parts to those automakers who are gaining market share—the foreign nameplates.
Michigan’s automakers are only 17% foreign owned; its only foreign owned assembly plant is the Mazda plant, versus its 15 domestic auto assembly plants.
If the current shifts in market share among automakers continue, it will be imperative for Michigan’s economy to attract investments from the successful auto suppliers and auto assembly companies.
Other performance differences between Indiana and Michigan are intriguing, though one cannot draw any hard conclusions. The chart below illustrates the population growth of the largest metropolitan areas in each state—Indianapolis and the Detroit MSA. Indianapolis’ population growth has exceeded the surrounding areas, and far exceeded that of the Detroit metro area.
Click to enlarge.
In searching for explanations, manufacturing concentration again comes to mind. As recently as 1969, only 26% of Indianapolis’ overall employment was manufacturing, versus Detroit’s 35%. Generally speaking, “factory towns” have had the roughest road in restructuring. As manufacturing employment shrinks, such cities must re-employ larger shares of their work force in new industries and activities. Otherwise, workers move from the area and create a different set of challenges to the town governments. That is, how to efficiently use and maintain their current roads and buildings for a less populous (and sometimes less wealthy) population.
Governance structures may also explain some of the challenges. Central city Detroit has been buffeted by job, population, and income flight, with concentrated poverty left in the wake. Detroit city leaders have been unable or unwilling to climb above the city’s fiscal problems to re-build its economy. To what extent has this failure come about because the central city was isolated from the rest of the metropolitan area (and state), and left to solve profound problems with its own (meager) resources?
Indianapolis and other cities have taken some modest steps in consolidating local governance to a closer fit with their metropolitan-wide economies. In the late 1960s, Indianapolis moved toward a “Unigov” structure. As Rick Mattoon discusses (working paper), the city’s boundary was expanded from 82 square miles to 402 square miles, with a legislative body responsible for governing the city. Though there remain many independent governments, taxing authorities, and school districts within the city, the consolidated city has six administrative departments below the mayor’s office.
Other Midwest cities with elements of regional governance include Minneapolis–St. Paul, which has a metropolitan sharing of property tax base. Columbus, Ohio, has not consolidated, yet its central city government has been aggressive in annexing land outward toward its interstate beltway. Both metropolitan economies have outgrown the broader Midwest.
Posted by Testa at 1:00 PM | Comments (1)