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The Case For Public Investment In Higher Pay For New York State Home Care Workers: Estimated Costs And Savings, Isaac Jabola-Carolus, Stephanie Luce, Ruth Milkman

Publications and Research

This report explores one potential solution to the mounting home care labor shortage in New York State: substantially raising wages for the state's home care workers. The analysis presents detailed projections, based on the best available data, of the economic effects of such an intervention, estimating the costs and benefits that would result. We find that public funding to raise home care wages would require significant resources, but those costs would be surpassed by the resulting savings, tax revenues, and economic spillover effects. The net economic gain would total at least $3.7 billion. Lifting wages would also help fill nearly …

Full Circle: Building A Local Economy Through Pollinator Enterprises In The Food System, Catherine M. Demets

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

As the alternative food movement gains traction in mainstream American society, it is essential to document how enterprises in the movement are building robust local economies. As Eric Holt-Giménez (2010: 1) points out, the movement “has successfully shone the spotlight on hunger and food access in the US, created a drive for more local food, and gotten better policy from the federal to the local level,” yet no assurance exists that our society’s interest in food issues is not a passing fad. Rather, we should ask: “how do we turn initial reforms into lasting food system transformation?” (Holt-Giménez 2010: 1). …

Capitalizing On Distinctiveness: Creating West Virginia For A New Economy, Brian A. Hoey

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Research

This paper explores use of images and ideas of place to promote particular social and economic agendas within the regional context of Appalachia. Despite prevailing imageries of backwardness and isolation that adhere to the region, as well as recent history of often-bleak economic conditions, communities such as Huntington, West Virginia, are ideal places to observe inventive forms of community-building, place-making, and place-marketing that borrow from emerging cultural and economic models and stand in sharp contrast to a once-dominant paradigm that encouraged capital investment by relying simply on tax breaks and the provision of cheap land and labor to attract large, …

Mountain Monitor - 3rd Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

As a group, the 10 major metro areas of the Mountain West outperformed the national economy during the third quarter of 2014 on all four indicators of economic vitality measured by the Mountain Monitor: employment growth, output growth, unemployment, and house prices. In the three months ending in September, the country’s large metropolitan areas were anticipating the rapid uptick in national economic growth that took hold at the end of 2014. Mountain region metro areas led the way.

All but two major metro areas in the region added jobs, and six did so at a faster rate than the …

Mountain Monitor - 2nd Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Economic growth returned to the 10 major metro areas of the Mountain West in the second quarter of 2014 after slippage in the first quarter of the year. The resumption of vitality progressed unevenly, however. Denver and Salt Lake City pulled ahead as the fastest-growing metro areas in the region. Ogden and Provo’s days of above-average growth appeared to be fading. Las Vegas’ economic recovery advanced strongly, but Sun Belt peers Phoenix and Tucson had more difficulty moving beyond the first quarter’s slowdown. Albuquerque, for its part, welcomed a return to employment and output growth.

Across the region’s 10 major …

Louisiana's Water Innovation Cluster: Is It Ready For Global Competition?, Stephen C. Picou

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The rapid growth of Louisiana's coastal restoration science and technology assets is paralleled by the growth of business resources to fulfill myriad project needs. Many institutions and organizations in Louisiana seek to further develop the state's research, education, engineering and related restoration assets into a globally competitive set of industries with exportable expertise and products that help the state capitalize on its water challenges. Globally, similar efforts are identified (and often branded) as water technology innovation clusters (or more simply water clusters). This paper explores the phenomenon of the development of water clusters by public-private partnerships and initiatives, nationally and …

Lessons From Lived Experience: From Fresh Insights To Effective Action, Lisa Deangelis, Maureen A. Scully, Andrea Wight

Emerging Leaders Program Team Projects

The 34 fellows in the 2014 Emerging Leaders Program worked with community partners to generate the theme, “Learning from Lived Experience: From fresh insights to effective action." Each year, the projects draw upon a theme or lesson from the prior year. Last year and this year, fellows saw how the lived experiences of both their stakeholders and themselves generated nuanced and appropriate approaches to problem-solving. The fellows worked with six community partners, giving their time and professional skills to understand how to frame complex social challenges, engage new partners and resources, and sharpen strategic plans. They conducted surveys, interviews, open …

Mountain Monitor - 1st Quarter 2014, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The quarter’s Mountain Monitor finds that the rate of economic recovery in the major metropolitan areas of the Mountain West is no longer impervious to national trends.

The previous edition of the Mountain Monitor observed that the regional rate of recovery seemed to be converging toward that of the nation. This edition of the Mountain Monitor suggests that the trend has progressed further.

The rate of economic recovery broadly slowed across the region from the fourth quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2014, just as it did nationally. The national headlines in the first three months of the …

Mountain Monitor - 4th Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The quarter’s Mountain Monitor finds that the pace of economic recovery in the Mountain West region’s major metropolitan areas converged toward that of the rest of the nation in the last quarter of 2013.

While quarterly performance on the Monitor’s four indicators of economic recovery—employment, output, the unemployment rate, and house prices—varied considerably across the 10 major metro areas of the region, their combined performance broadly slowed to track with the rate of national economic recovery. The quarter’s average job growth remained unchanged in the region at 0.4 percent as the national economy caught up. The gap between the national …

Mountain Monitor - 3rd Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The quarter’s Mountain Monitor marks the four-year anniversary of Brookings Mountain West's quarterly tracking of the uneven pace of recovery across the major metro areas of the Intermountain West and it finds that, although the region continues to outperform the national economy the rate of recovery slowed moderately in the region’s metro areas.

As a group, Mountain region metro areas advanced on all four indicators of economic recovery tracked by the Monitor—employment, output, unemployment, and house prices—but their progress was more restrained in the third quarter of 2013 than it was in the second.

Beneath the regional headline of moderating …

Mountain Monitor - 2nd Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Economic recovery progressed steadily across the metropolitan Mountain West in the second quarter of 2013. Many of the region’s major metro areas counted among the strongest economic performers nationally, but output growth slowed over the quarter and the region‘s unemployment recovery looked to be stagnating. Moderate job growth and a fast and accelerating housing recovery buoyed the Mountain West economy in the second quarter.

Mountain Monitor-1st Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Economic recovery gained strength across the major metro areas of the Mountain West in the first quarter of 2013. Multiple metro areas achieved long-awaited full employment recoveries in the first quarter and regional production surpassed pre-recession levels of output for the first time. The region’s strong housing rebound continued to be a boon. Additionally, a special supplement to the Monitor shows that the healthcare sector has been an outsized contributor to recovery throughout the region. Despite progress on multiple fronts, though, many Mountain metro areas remain scarred with high unemployment rates, severely depressed house prices, and daunting jobs deficits.

Mountain Monitor-4th Quarter 2012, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Indicators of economic recovery depicted continued progress in the major metropolitan areas of the Mountain West in the fourth quarter of 2012. The region’s employment recovery gained momentum, and solid home-price increases in the region contributed to the nation‘s broader housing recovery. Such inroads bode well for further advances in 2013. At the same time, the region’s output recovery slowed and unemployment refused to budge.

Mountain Monitor-3rd Quarter 2012, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The major metropolitan areas of the Intermountain West finally put the housing bust behind them in the third quarter of 2012 and in most places made solid progress. House prices rose in all 10 major metropolitan markets in the months from June to September for the first time since the recession began. Likewise, output growth accelerated and the unemployment rate continued to fall. Unfortunately none of this prevented the region’s already feeble jobs recovery from slowing.

Mountain Monitor-2nd Quarter 2012, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Data for the second quarter of 2012 reveal that the large metropolitan areas of the Mountain region were undergoing some of both the strongest and weakest economic recoveries in the nation—even as the pace of recovery across the region as a whole slackened. The result is a new geography. Crash-blasted Boise and Phoenix, along with Utah’s metropolitan areas, are now recovering relatively strongly while Colorado’s metropolitan areas and Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and Tucson struggle.

Mountain Monitor-1st Quarter 2012, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

For three years now the Mountain Monitor — Brookings Mountain West’s Mountain Zone variant of Brookings’ MetroMonitor — has been tracking the region’s protracted, in-most-places anemic, economic recovery. Quarter-to-quarter, the Monitor has reported on a slow healing of the region’s metropolitan economies that has differed starkly from the region’s past boom-bust cycles.

Mountain Monitor-4th Quarter 2011, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Recovery was firmly underway in the Intermountain West by the fourth quarter of 2011 but its pace varied considerably across the region’s 10 major metropolitan areas. Six of the 10 metros saw job growth in the fourth quarter but only four saw it accelerate over the previous one. Output grew everywhere but only in half of the region’s metros did the pace of growth quicken. The unemployment rate was down across the board from one year earlier. House prices in most markets stabilized. Yet signs of a robust, sustained, and self-fueling recovery remained elusive.

National economic indicators from early 2012 …

Mountain Monitor-2nd Quarter 2011, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Data through the second quarter of 2011 raise new questions about the pace and certainty of recovery in the Intermountain West. Even places like Denver, Colorado Springs, and Ogden—which only suffered mild setbacks in the early quarters of the recession—have stagnated in the wake of the nation’s worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Output and employment increased hesitantly in eight of the 10 major metros of the Intermountain West in the second quarter while the housing market slumped to new lows everywhere.

Mountain Monitor-1st Quarter 2011, Mark Muro, Kenan Fikri, Jonathan Rothwell

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The pace of economic recovery slowed in the large metros of the Intermountain West in the first quarter of 2011. Widespread but slowing output growth was coupled with much slower improvement in the labor market, where for the first time the region’s unemployment rate edged above the nation’s. The weight of a still-depressed housing market slowed recovery further. Overall, the differing courses of the region’s 10 major metro economies since the beginning of the recession can be characterized by relatively strong bouncebacks to the north and east of the region and more sluggish and protracted slogs to the south and …

Mountain Monitor-4th Quarter 2010, Kenan Fikri, Jonathan Rothwell

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The metros of the Intermountain West largely fell into two categories by the close of the fourth quarter of 2010 in December: those consolidating their gains from previous quarters on the way to recovery and those still struggling to turn around appreciably and reposition themselves for the next economy. Along those lines, three Intermountain West metros ranked in the top quintile of performers and three in the bottom at year’s end on a measure of overall performance that takes into account changes in employment levels, the unemployment rate, output (gross metropolitan product or GMP), and housing prices since the beginning …

Mountain Monitor-1st Quarter 2010, Mark Muro, Jonathan Rothwell, Kenan Fikri

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Where are the jobs? That anxious question pervading national discussions of the Great Recession and its aftermath is becoming acute in the Intermountain West. Not only has the region’s usual faster-than-the-nation employment snapback after recessions failed to materialize this time around. What is more, the Mountain region’s halting economic recovery in some ways actually weakened in the first three months of 2010 as reports this new edition of the Mountain Monitor, a quarterly report produced by Brookings Mountain West, a partnership between Brookings and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), and a companion product to Brookings national MetroMonitor. Drawing …

Mountain Monitor-4th Quarter 2009, Mark Muro, Jonathan Rothwell

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The Mountain West’s recovery from the Great Recession is spreading. Output is growing in every metropolitan area. Still, hiring remains elusive—a fact frustrating the entire nation, but perhaps more so in a region used to snapping, even roaring, back from recessions faster than the rest of the nation. Drawing on data covering the fourth quarter of 2009 (ending in December), this new Mountain Monitor—a companion product to Brookings’ national MetroMonitor and a quarterly resource produced by Brookings Mountain West, a partnership between Brookings and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas—surveys a region that is at once recovering and still …

Mountain Monitor-3rd Quarter 2009, Brookings Mountain West

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Nationwide, the recession is technically over. Or at least that is the view of most economists. They note that real U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) finally expanded in the third quarter of 2009, growing at a 2.8 percent annual rate after four consecutive quarters of contraction. They point to a significant slowing of job losses in November, rising housing prices, and a slight downtick in unemployment as other positive signs. Their conclusion: Economic recovery is at last underway. And yet, the pace of renewal seems tentative and its geography patchy. Most notably, the aggregate national story of recovery and expansion …

Improving Education And Training For Economic Development, Joan Mcrae Stoia

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the connections between workforce quality and economic prosperity, as well as the role of the Massachusetts education and training system, in developing and preserving that quality and supporting the state's key industries. It includes a review of the most recent employment trend and projection data available from the Massachusetts Department of Employment and Training, information about several business-based workplace education models, and a discussion of the specific education and training needs of workers across the age/skill continuum. For the purpose of this discussion, the education and training system are broadly defined to include existing public, private, and …

The African-American Urban Milieu And Economic Development, Lenneal J. Henderson

Trotter Review

Economic disparity between urban white America and urban black America is becoming more pronounced, whether in central cities, suburbs, or edge cities. African-American employment prospects have declined in central cities, increased slightly in suburbs, and increased substantially for the few African Americans living and working in edge cities. William Julius Wilson cites the decline in stable, higher-paying, blue-collar employment in the industrial cities throughout America. Others identify the changing structure of metropolitan employment as characterized by more rapid professional and white-collar employment growth in suburbs and edge cities and declining employment in central cities. In his book, Cities Without Suburbs …