Going beneath the hood
Buffalo is No. 45 in economic performance ranking, signifying uneven effects of recession on cities
Published: June 17, 2009, 12:30 am
Story tools:
Share this story:
Pulled in two directions by different measures of economic health, the Buffalo area winds up near the middle of a new ranking of the nation’s top 100 metropolitan areas. That makes the city a microcosm of the study’s overall finding that the ongoing recession has had very uneven effects across the country.
The Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution of Washington, D. C., today rolls out its MetroMonitor, what it calls the first ongoing “beneath the hood” look at the recession’s impact on the nation’s cities. It takes each city’s measure on such indicators as unemployment, wages, economic output, home prices and home foreclosures.
While no part of the country has been spared the impact of bad times, the study finds that the economic collapse has come down hardest on communities that were dependent on the auto industry or tourism and those that have suffered the most from the bursting of the real estate bubble.
Those that sank the least and are coming back the quickest are metro economies based on medicine and education — known as “Eds and Meds” — and government. That is a finding in support of those whose hope for Buffalo’s economic future is centered on the expansion of the University at Buffalo and its downtown medical campus.
“The phenomenon they are seeing in certain cities shows the asset we have here and the value of the proposals we’ve been putting forward,” said UB vice president for external affairs, Marsha Henderson, referring to the UB 2020 quest for financial support and management independence from state government.
In a statement accompanying the release of the report, co-author Howard Wial said the fact that the impacts of the recession have been so uneven should guide policy-makers in their responses.
“Fiscal and monetary policy will not be sufficient for stimulating a truly nationwide recovery,” Wial said. “Many areas will need targeted assistance, and since states have no funds available, the federal government will have to step up to fill the void.”
Buffalo’s middle-of-the-pack ranking — 45th out of 100 metro areas — results from its very high status as a community where housing prices are up and few homes are in foreclosure, even as it struggles with high unemployment, falling wages and a decline in productivity.
The other areas in upstate New York that were large enough to be measured by the Brookings study are scattered above Buffalo on the overall scale of economic health. Rochester comes in 20th, Syracuse 26th, Albany 29th and Poughkeepsie 35th. New York City, socked by Wall Street’s woes, is 60th.
Wial said that Rochester scores ahead of nearby Buffalo because the industrial legacy found in Rochester—the imaging technologies of Kodak and Xerox — is now of more value than the industrial legacy of Buffalo — especially automobiles.
“To say that all the places that have a manufacturing base are in the same boat is just wrong,” Wail said.
Topping the list of economic health among American metro areas is San Antonio, Texas. Detroit comes in dead last. But the separation is more complicated than a Sun Belt-Rust Belt contrast. While the top 20 metro areas are mostly from the Southwest and Plains states, cities in upstate New York and in Pennsylvania rank in the upper half while cities in Florida, California and Nevada claim 15 of the bottom 20 spots in the survey.
For Buffalo, its mediocre score is pulled up by a mixture of an increase in home values, where it ranks second nationwide, and a low rate of mortgageable homes that are now in foreclosure, where it sits fourth from the top. But it is pulled down by its place among the deepest declines in average wages from the last quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009 (93rd), in economic output (89th) and in percent change in employment (93rd).
The decline in wages has been hard on the New York economy generally, with Poughkeepsie, New York City, Albany, Syracuse and Rochester taking up the bottom five spots on that list. The study’s authors suggest that that alignment, along with some otherwise hard-hit Sunbelt cities scoring in the top 20 in wage growth, comes from the fact that California, Florida and Las Vegas are losing low-wage jobs while New York is losing high-wage jobs.
gpyle@buffnews.com
Newsletters
Sign up now for daily and weekly newsletters from BuffaloNews.com and get quick links to the info you want delivered directly to your inbox.Reader comments
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Comments have been disabled.
Due to a high volume of submissions that violate The News’ guidelines, commenting is no longer available on this story. If you’d like to share your thoughts on this story, click here to get information on contributing to The News’ opinion pages.