New Challenges for a Nationwide Recovery

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Released: October 2010

Authors:

Adam Looney • Policy Director, The Hamilton Project; Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Michael Greenstone • Director, The Hamilton Project; 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, MIT; Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Introduction

Today’s release of September’s jobs numbers confirms what we all know: too many American workers remain unemployed. As the government reported, the U.S. economy lost 95,000 jobs in September as a decline in government employment outweighed modest private-sector gains. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.6 percent. In this month's blog, we are highlighting how some communities face greater barriers to recovery than others, as well as updating our jobs gap numbers. We will also outline policy proposals for aiding economically distressed communities, which will be released at a Hamilton Project event on October 13.

Threatening the core of the American Dream, a rising number of communities across the nation confront the permanent loss of industries, a glut of empty homes, and high rates of unemployed but able workers. While history suggests that most communities will bounce back somewhat quickly from recessions and other economic shocks, some do not. The time necessary for a complete recovery may be measured in decades for these distressed communities.