Guide to the Metro Monitor
The purpose of the Metro Monitor is to track the performance of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas during the great recession and its aftermath. We analyze recovery performance on four key indicators—total employment, unemployment, total output (gross product), and house prices—capturing the change from each metro area's low point or trough to the most recent quarter of available data (metro area data typically lag national statistics by a quarter).
For each of the four key indicators we also present the current level as a share of the peak to demonstrate how well each metro area has recovered from it's pre-recession peak (100% = a full recovery) and we show percent changes for the two most recent quarters of available data to demonstrate current trajectories.
Finally, to help understand what is driving performance we present recent changes in employment and output for each metro area's major industries.
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Rachel Harvey
rharvey@brookings.edu
(202) 797-6073
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About the Metropolitan Policy Program
Created in 1996, the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program provides decision makers with cutting-edge research and policy ideas for improving the health and prosperity of cities and metropolitan areas including their component cities, suburbs, and rural areas. To learn more visit:
www.brookings.edu/metro.
The Metropolitan Policy Program Leadership Council
The Metropolitan Policy Program is supported and informed by a network of leaders who strive every day to create the kind of healthy and vibrant communities that form the foundation of the U.S. economy. The Metropolitan Policy Program Leadership Council—a bipartisan network of individual, corporate, and philanthropic investors—comes from a broad array of metropolitan areas around the nation. Council members provide us financial support but, more importantly, are true intellectual and strategic partners. While many of these leaders act globally, they retain a commitment to the vitality of their local and regional communities, a rare blend that makes their engagement even more valuable. To learn more about the members of our Leadership Council, please go here.
In order to define troughs in each metro area, we first define peaks. For each of the four key indicators, a peak is defined as the highest level attained between the first quarter of 2004 (or in the case of house prices, 2005) and the second quarter of 2009; in some metro areas where this peak occurred in the second quarter of 2009, the peak was defined as the highest level attained between 2004 (or 2005) and the most recent quarter of losses prior to the second quarter of 2009. A trough is then defined as the lowest level reached since a peak.
Total employment: Total wage and salary jobs, seasonally adjusted. Source: Moody’s Analytics.
Unemployment rate: Percentage of the labor force that was unemployed in the last month of the quarter, seasonally adjusted. For metro areas in New England these data are not published according to the standard county-based definitions of metro areas; consequently there are discrepancies between the geographies for which the unemployment data are published and the geographies underlying the other indicators. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Total output (gross product): Total value of goods and services produced in a metropolitan area. Commonly referred to as gross metropolitan product and analogous to GDP. Source: Moody's Analytics.
House prices: Prices of single-family properties whose mortgages have been purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Source: Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index.
Overall recovery: An index of recovery which averages the standardized scores for the four key indicators from the trough to the current quarter. We present each metro area's rank on this measure.
Recent industry changes: Percent change in total employment and total output by industry. Source: Moody's Analytics.