Geography of Jobs | Tom Stellman | TEDxBrookings
I spent a lot of time thinking about jobs and I'm in the economic development business and I work with communities across the country that are trying to grow their economies or look for ways to be sustainable you know look for ways to build their tax base so that they can pay for the streets in the libraries and the parks and everything that we in our communities love and with that comes good-paying jobs I mean that's that's the goal of economic development you really have good-paying jobs for those that are in your community so I spend a lot of time thinking about jobs so a couple of weeks ago I decided to google the definition of a job so the first thing that came up on the list was an urban dictionary definition so be ready so the means by which at least 30% of your life is stolen from you to enrich the owners of a company making useless stuff that's some other poor idiot in a job will top high so I have teenagers at my house and I showed them this definition I said it's from urban dictionary and of course my teenagers are like dad you've got to be very careful when you're searching on urban dictionary that's the place you're gonna start so the next definition that came up was a merriam-webster dictionary the work that a person does regularly in order to earn money this does seem like a reasonable one it's simple it's clear but in my business the definition that I have to work with looks like this so I'm not expecting anybody in the room to read this definition it's a technical definition it's the one used by the government the Bureau of Labor Statistics to look at you know if you hear a report that says there were 170,000 jobs created in the economy last month this is the definition they're using employment unemployment dropped to 5.1 percent you know this is the definition that they're using in December of 2007 the u.s. entered the deepest recession that we've experienced since or two and how many of you are excited to talk about the recession yes I knew it I knew it but it led to a financial meltdown in 2008 there were business failures people lost their jobs people lost their retirement plans it was a really challenging time and I know you're thinking well this is old news Tom we're out of that recession but I'm here to tell you that it's still with us and it's impacting our labor market to this day and so I want to talk about that so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how this recession this last recession compared to the previous five recessions so the 74 to 76 recession we lost about two and a half three percent of our jobs lasted for about two years the 1980 recession we lost about 1% it lasted for a year but it was followed by a recession in 81 83 that lasts a couple years was a little bit deeper and a little bit longer there was a fresh session from 1990 to 1993 relatively shallow but a little bit longer you're starting to see a trend here 2001 to 2005 that's what we refer to as the dot bomb or the.com recession shallow but long here's the last recession so we lost over 6% of our employment base and it took us six and a half years to recover that to recover those jobs so that happened last May May of 2014 so we thought it would be interesting you know after the recession started to map it we said well you know what's going on with the metros around the country and so we created a map you know jobs are growing in this Metro they're shrinking in this Metro you know red and blue colors we thought it was really interesting the next month came along we mapped it again the next main month came along we mapped it again we thought well wouldn't it be interested if we could animate this and put it on the web and so that's when we created the geography of jobs and so in the upper left hand corner is a timeline a time date stamp and in a moment you're going to see this move you're gonna see red bubbles you're gonna see blue bubbles the red bubble lost jobs for the last 12 months blue bubble means that you've gained jobs for the last 12 months so are you with me so far all right all right so when I hit the play button this is going to start in January of 2004 because that was the end of the last recession and I wanted to show some patterns before our recession started so here we go so we're in note we're in 2004 and I'm going to stop it in June of 2005 because I want to point something out most of the country is blue most of the metros have gained jobs over the last 12 months we've come out of the previous recession strong housing starts access to money subprime mortgages all available to us so we're spending money it's it's a good sign it's a good sign I'm gonna take us on the journey here again whoa so what's happened here this looks like New Orleans can anybody tell me Katrina that's right significant impact a very traumatic there we actually just celebrated or commemorated the 10th anniversary of Katrina earlier this year here we go again Detroit look what's going on up in the Midwest this is long before the recession actually starts and I'm gonna stop it again now in March of 2008 because the stock market crisis the financial crisis actually didn't start till later in the year but you'll notice a couple of things one obviously the Detroit area and automotive is sit pretty hard but look at Florida housing bubble is popping there look over at California look at Phoenix you know the housing bubble has essentially popped and so I'm gonna push play again and to get ready for the ride so we're in you know we're late 2008 stock market gets hit right about now and if you're squeamish you might want to close your eyes cuz it's not pretty so I've stopped it again in June 2009 for a reason two things happen one is this is the bottoming out of the recession in terms of jobs but it is actually the official end of the recession from an economic standpoint you know the country is starting to grow again from an output standpoint so we're starting to grow again but obviously we're at the bottom of that jobs impact so it's significant and now I'm going to let it play out by 2010 companies are feeling confident again they're starting to purchase equipment again they're starting to create jobs again but one thing I'll point out is that these bubbles represent a 12-month sort of rolling jobs number was designed to show the impact and so these are 12 months that are kind of rolling along but you'll notice there's quite a few red bubbles in there some are going back and forth it's still a little bit bumpy and so what we did at the end of is we said you know that showed a rolling average what about the cumulative and so we created something called the geography of recovery and so I'm not actually going to play this one but what you'll notice here is that this starts in December of 2007 to the present and we look at you know who's recovered and who hasn't from that time and so the US overall has actually recovered and gave 3% jobs on top of that but there are still 120 metros in the country that have not recovered the jobs that were lost during that recession 120 and I'm here to say that the disruption is not just a geographic disruption it's also impacted the kinds of jobs that are created a lot of the recovery came from low-wage jobs so if you look at this low-wage jobs have led the recovery rank behind that's high wage jobs but behind that or the middle wage jobs it was really important to us another interesting fact is that many communities those especially their expanding employers are saying they're having a difficult time finding certain skills there's certain jobs that are going unfilled because they can't find the people to match up with those jobs this recession had an impact beyond just job losses kind of changed up much of the structure it really created a new geography of jobs so I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite quotes the more you want things to say the same the more that you're gonna have to be willing to change and I tell this to the communities that I work with if you're going to be successful if you're a company you're gonna have to be flexible you're gonna have to restructure you may have to automate and you may have to pay more to get those skills that you need if you're a job seeker you may have to think about contracting or you may have to actually you know go to work for one of the larger companies and you know spend a little time to get some experience you may have to create your own job but one thing for sure you're gonna have to see yourself as a lifelong learner because the market is going to continue to change and if you don't embrace that you're not going to be successful and the last thought in this new geography of jobs if you're a community you're going to have to acknowledge that this is a new jobs market and you're gonna have to embrace as one of your top strategies talent retention talent development and talent attraction thank you very much