Brookings: DC Still Rising

• June 27, 2012

by Shilpi Paul

Economic indicators reveal that the nation is slowly on its way to a tentative recovery, with some cities recovering much faster than others, determined the Brookings Institution in their latest edition of Metro Monitor.

Every quarter, Brookings tracks the economic performance of the top 100 metro areas in the country, comparing current numbers to their lows during the recession. The Metro Monitor includes snapshots of individual cities and, of course, UrbanTurf is most interested in where DC ranks.

DC’s rankings, courtesy of the Brookings Institution

As UT readers no doubt know, the area’s housing prices have recovered better than most, ranking 15th out of 100 among the metro regions. For employment recovery, DC ranked a respectable 37th, and a graph in the snapshot shows that DC employment numbers are rising steadily, recently surpassing their 2008 highs. Brookings also drilled down into the employment numbers for various industries in the DC area. Apparently, the leisure and hospitality sector has grown the most of late, perhaps due to our restaurant boom; that sector is followed by construction, which we see evidenced in the cranes all around us. You can find all the details here.

In more confirmation that DC is rising, the McKinsey Global Institute (recently reported by The Atlantic Cities) just compared the GDP of thirty U.S. cities in 1978 versus 2010; in that time period, DC climbed from the seventh spot to the fourth, switching places with Philadelphia. Now we only follow New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, who maintained their top spots over the 30-year span.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/nation_recovering_from_recession_but_slowly/5708