Brookings’ MetroMonitor has been, we hope, a steady witness over the past three years, tracking the downs and ups and back-down-agains of economic recession and recovery across the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas each quarter. The story hasn’t often been one of breakthroughs but it has been revealing about the nature of the nation’s sluggish recovery and the extensive variation among the nation’s diverse metro areas. Now, though, the Monitor has morphed. To celebrate its third anniversary, the Monitor has today shed the text-based format of its youth and reemerged as a fully overhau
KITT Moving to Nevada?
That famous car from the Knight Rider series could soon be street-legal in Nevada, with legislation pending in the state’s legislature. OK, maybe KITT wasn't the real deal, but autonomous (i.e. driverless) vehicles have moved beyond the realm of science fiction, and last week an article in the New York Times revealed that Google has been lobbying the state to legalize these autonomous autos for use on Nevada roads. Google has been putting a lot of effort into developing the vehicles.
Last week’s jobs report turned out to be a general disappointment, but it was probably especially troubling to metros that rely heavily on construction for jobs and output. That industry shed another 22,000 jobs in June, completely wiping out small gains it had made in February and March of this year. Since the start of the national recession in December of 2007, construction has lost a whopping 1.9 million jobs—or more than a quarter of its pre-recession employment level. Not surprisingly, metros across the country are not absorbing these declines uniformly.
