Why Some Cities Get All the Good Jobs (chicagotribune.com)

New submitter Ericmesrr writes with a link to a Bloomberg story (as carried by the ChicagoTribune) about geographic trends in job creation in the U.S, from which he excerpts this quote from U.C Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti: "A handful of cities with the 'right' industries and a solid base of human capital keep attracting good employers and offering high wages, while those at the other extreme, cities with the 'wrong' industries and a limited human capital base, are stuck with dead-end jobs and low average wages. This divide I will call it the Great Divergence has its origins in the 1980s, when American cities started to be increasingly defined by their residents' levels of education. Cities with many college-educated workers started attracting even more, and cities with a less educated workforce started losing ground."

Comments

Re:Technology Paradox

[RabidReindeer]

Well, int the 60s, everyone was going on about how the increased productivity automation brought us was going to have us all working 3-hour work days.

Productivity went up, the work week went up, the profits from increased productivity went into someone else's pockets.

Re: Kids

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is doing much better in that regard than Europe: the US has by far the largest rail system in the world, both in absolute terms and relative to population and area. And the US rail system is used at nearly 100% capacity for freight.

European rail system are inefficiently utilized for passengers, that's why European highways are clogged with huge trucks hauling large loads long distance.