The New Map of Economic Growth and Recovery
“This analysis surveys the economic landscape emerging from the Great Recession and compares it to previous recovery periods. It identifies differences in the strength and geography of county-level growth in employment and business establishments — two key markers of economic dynamism — and uncovers three significant transformations in the economy. The first and most unambiguously troubling is a collapse in the number of new firms in the economy. The second is the increasing geographic concentration of recovery-era businesses and jobs into a smaller number of more populous counties. The third is the shift in the counties driving the nation’s economic recoveries from smaller to larger ones. Together, the findings capture an economy veering towards a less broadly dynamic, less entrepreneurial, and more geographically concentrated equilibrium — more reliant than ever on a few high-performing geographies abundant in talent and capital to carry national rates of growth.”
