Collaborative Research: Uneven Economic Geographies from Recession to Recovery

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This project is about the impacts of the Great Recession that began with the 2008 financial crisis and its recovery on workers across different metropolitan labor markets in the U.S. as impact of the recession were not uniform across places or people. Some places fared better than others, and some workers fared better than others and this project investigates why. Skill-biased explanations of employment inequality emphasize education as the primary reason that employment outcomes differ among individual workers, but evidence also reveals that the institutional characteristics of metropolitan labor markets influence individual employment and wage outcomes. In particular, institutional explanations of labor market inequality emphasize local social and political factors that influence conditions of work and employment, such as unionization, size of the public sector, and employment policies (e.g., minimum wage laws). This project investigates if and how local economic and institutional factors, such as the economic mix of a regional economy, changes in public sector employment, levels of unionization, and employment policies, shaped differential trajectories of decline, rebound, and resiliency for both places and individual workers during and after the Great Recession. The project will also examine changing patterns of inequality among workers in the same labor markets before and after the recession. In particular, the PIs will examine if greater levels of inequality accompanied recovery and how inequality was influenced by local institutional factors. This analysis will help establish a more comprehensive picture of recovery as well as identify new patterns of inequality that may be emerging between places and among workers. Methodologically, the use of mapping tools, distributional statistical methods, and publicly available census data will help identify how the characteristics of metropolitan labor markets and individual workers influence employment, wages, and wage inequality. The project focuses on these effects especially among more disadvantaged workers, such as African Americans, immigrants, and less-educated individuals.The research will contribute to the training of students, both at the doctoral level in geography and at the master's level in social work. Concerted efforts will be made to recruit student researchers from underrepresented groups. In addition to research dissemination in geography and social science journals, the project will generate two reports focused on the analysis of employment trends in Chicago and Los Angeles that will be disseminated to local community-based organizations. A project website will be developed to house digital maps, disseminate findings, and make available classroom exercises developed from the research and data. The results of the research will identify local institutional practices and policies that moderate or intensify the negative effects of economic transformation on particular segments of the workforce. These findings are relevant to policy makers and voters engaged in policy debates about economic and employment inequality.This project is being co-funded with the Sociology program.