New reasons for concern about job-growth data (Kansas City)
By ARTHUR R. WILLIAMS and KARL F. JOHNSON
Guest columnists
On July 18, 2000, we published a commentary in Star Business Weekly titled “Job Creation and Employment Levels Merit Attention.”
We were very concerned at that time about possible misinterpretations by community leaders and the media of a recently released Brookings Institution report. This report indicated healthy job creation in Kansas City compared with 25 other metropolitan areas.
We pointed out that the Kansas City area was in fact “just above average” in terms of employment growth. However, our data also indicated declining rates of employment growth over the decades of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Decade-compounded rates of metropolitan employment growth were 2.17 percent, 2.15 percent and 2.08 percent, respectively. While these changes looked small, they implied creation of at least 17,000 fewer jobs in the metropolitan area in the year 2000 than if the average rate of growth of the ’70s and ’80s had been maintained.
Data then available also did not allow us to report separate rates of employment growth for Kansas City and the metropolitan area as a whole. However, since Johnson County job growth for 2000 had been recently reported to be 6.7 percent, we surmised that figures for the entire metropolitan area implied low rates of employment growth in Kansas City.
It is time to return to these data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has revised the 1990 data, we have separate data for Kansas City from 1990 through November 2006, and we have more than a half decade of additional data (2000-2006) for the metropolitan area. Our findings now are that rates of employment growth in the metropolitan area were as previously noted in the ’70s and ’80s, but the ’90s corrected employment growth rate was only 1.63 percent in the metropolitan area and 1.44 percent in Kansas City.
These figures suggest a much steeper decline in employment creation than we had previously noted. Even more troubling, growth rates so far in the current decade are 0.15 percent in the metropolitan area and -0.06 percent in Kansas City. The 1990 and 2000 growth rates suggest that fewer jobs are being created than are needed to provide employment for youths leaving school, for people losing jobs because of staffing reductions and firm closings, and, most likely, for those wishing to change jobs.
On the basis of the data used in our previous commentary, we concluded: “Some pride can be taken in the fact that employment growth in Kansas City has been just above average, but a stumble means less than average. While it is not time to panic, a testing of tornado sirens is warranted.”
We now think that tornado sirens should be sounding. If the current employment situation continues, it will have many negative consequences for the quality of life in Kansas City. Among these are increasing social tensions that accompany declining opportunities, such as increased homicides and crime rates and declining health and hygiene. Youths will have to seek employment outside the metropolitan area, thereby negatively affecting the family-friendly nature of the community.
Policies of the ’90s and the current decade pursued by Kansas City and other localities purportedly to stimulate employment show no evidence of having worked. In a story in The Kansas City Star on Sunday, March 4, 2007, it was noted that Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes and City Manager Wayne Cauthen have argued that more than 19,000 jobs have been created in Kansas City because of tax increment financing. There is absolutely no evidence of such job creation in the BLS employment data.
From an employment perspective, a critical look at the economic development policy of Kansas City is justified by its frequent and injudicious use of TIF, business subsidies and funding in support of expensive and economically unsustainable projects. If current economic “growth” and “redevelopment” policies continue, resources will be transferred from needed public services as the tax base erodes and the viability of neighborhoods weakens, resulting in no net gains in jobs, economic growth, businesses attraction and overall quality of life. Current policies have not and will not work for working men and women or even the lower middle class, and it is time for a change.
Arthur R. Williams, Ph.D., is chairman, health care policy and research, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He was a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City from 1990 to 2002. Karl F. Johnson, is professor and director emeritus of the L.P.
Guest columnists
On July 18, 2000, we published a commentary in Star Business Weekly titled “Job Creation and Employment Levels Merit Attention.”
We were very concerned at that time about possible misinterpretations by community leaders and the media of a recently released Brookings Institution report. This report indicated healthy job creation in Kansas City compared with 25 other metropolitan areas.
We pointed out that the Kansas City area was in fact “just above average” in terms of employment growth. However, our data also indicated declining rates of employment growth over the decades of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Decade-compounded rates of metropolitan employment growth were 2.17 percent, 2.15 percent and 2.08 percent, respectively. While these changes looked small, they implied creation of at least 17,000 fewer jobs in the metropolitan area in the year 2000 than if the average rate of growth of the ’70s and ’80s had been maintained.
Data then available also did not allow us to report separate rates of employment growth for Kansas City and the metropolitan area as a whole. However, since Johnson County job growth for 2000 had been recently reported to be 6.7 percent, we surmised that figures for the entire metropolitan area implied low rates of employment growth in Kansas City.
It is time to return to these data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has revised the 1990 data, we have separate data for Kansas City from 1990 through November 2006, and we have more than a half decade of additional data (2000-2006) for the metropolitan area. Our findings now are that rates of employment growth in the metropolitan area were as previously noted in the ’70s and ’80s, but the ’90s corrected employment growth rate was only 1.63 percent in the metropolitan area and 1.44 percent in Kansas City.
These figures suggest a much steeper decline in employment creation than we had previously noted. Even more troubling, growth rates so far in the current decade are 0.15 percent in the metropolitan area and -0.06 percent in Kansas City. The 1990 and 2000 growth rates suggest that fewer jobs are being created than are needed to provide employment for youths leaving school, for people losing jobs because of staffing reductions and firm closings, and, most likely, for those wishing to change jobs.
On the basis of the data used in our previous commentary, we concluded: “Some pride can be taken in the fact that employment growth in Kansas City has been just above average, but a stumble means less than average. While it is not time to panic, a testing of tornado sirens is warranted.”
We now think that tornado sirens should be sounding. If the current employment situation continues, it will have many negative consequences for the quality of life in Kansas City. Among these are increasing social tensions that accompany declining opportunities, such as increased homicides and crime rates and declining health and hygiene. Youths will have to seek employment outside the metropolitan area, thereby negatively affecting the family-friendly nature of the community.
Policies of the ’90s and the current decade pursued by Kansas City and other localities purportedly to stimulate employment show no evidence of having worked. In a story in The Kansas City Star on Sunday, March 4, 2007, it was noted that Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes and City Manager Wayne Cauthen have argued that more than 19,000 jobs have been created in Kansas City because of tax increment financing. There is absolutely no evidence of such job creation in the BLS employment data.
From an employment perspective, a critical look at the economic development policy of Kansas City is justified by its frequent and injudicious use of TIF, business subsidies and funding in support of expensive and economically unsustainable projects. If current economic “growth” and “redevelopment” policies continue, resources will be transferred from needed public services as the tax base erodes and the viability of neighborhoods weakens, resulting in no net gains in jobs, economic growth, businesses attraction and overall quality of life. Current policies have not and will not work for working men and women or even the lower middle class, and it is time for a change.
Arthur R. Williams, Ph.D., is chairman, health care policy and research, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He was a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City from 1990 to 2002. Karl F. Johnson, is professor and director emeritus of the L.P.
Labels: employment, Kansas City
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