Search

Expanding employment opportunities for citizens has become an increasingly central goal of public policy in the United States. Prior work has considered that the inability of households to spatially access jobs may be a driver of unemployment. The provision of public transportation provides a viable policy lever to increase the number of job opportunities available to households. Previous research has yielded mixed results regarding whether household location is an important factor in determining employment status. Several papers have identified mobility as a limiting factor for obtaining a job, particularly in regards to private vehicle ownership. The location of economically developed neighbourhoods and the citing of public transportation are conceivably codetermined, presenting an endogenous relationship. It is therefore unclear if public transportation access is actually contributing to neighbourhood job market outcomes. This paper will use the incidence of Hurricane Sandy striking New York City on 29 October 2012 and the resulting exogenous reduction in public transit access to particular neighbourhoods as a natural experiment to test for the effect of public transportation on employment outcomes. This study identifies a significant causal effect linking public transportation access to neighbourhood unemployment rates, particularly amongst subgroups dependent on public transit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprise zone policy is a potential tool for the regeneration of distressed areas, based primarily on tax incentives to businesses locating in the target areas. The tool has been tested in several countries over more than 35 years but there is no consensus on whether or not it is effective and efficient in creating jobs and reducing unemployment in targeted localities. This paper reviews seminal enterprise zone evaluations in the UK, USA and France. More than one-half of the studies reported local employment benefits but the others reported none and information is limited on what affects policy success. The paper argues that typically narrow-focus research designs and a-theoretical evaluation have contributed to the lack of consensus and policy insight, potentially exacerbated by non-exact data. It proposes richer evaluations with explicit theoretical frameworks, such as the one presented in the paper, more comparative work and the use of more accurate data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the employment outcomes of Australian labour market programme participants vary according to whether they receive housing assistance. This issue attracted attention when a series of US studies showed that clients of welfare-to-work programmes are more likely to achieve positive employment outcomes if housing assistance is also received. This paper tracks the employment outcomes of labour market programme participants utilising six waves of data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) database. Findings from a random effects model suggest that housing assistance status has little impact (either negative or positive) on employment outcomes. Differences in the institutional arrangements governing access to housing assistance could be responsible for the absence of any effect in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature on spatial mismatch often focuses on a mismatch within cities or local labour markets. This paper looks at the spatial mismatch between local labour markets. Using US data, we study the evolution of inter-regional mismatch between 1980 and 2010 and how this evolution varies across skill levels. Since we expect the spatial structure of supply and demand in the labour market to play a central role at this geographical level, we develop an extension of the spatial mismatch index, as the standard version does not take this spatial structure into account. Our results indicate that spatial mismatch has been increasing over the past decades, an increase that is largely attributable to spatial structure effects. The inter-regional spatial mismatch mainly affects low-skilled jobs and workers: our findings suggest that the degree of the spatial mismatch for low-skilled, relative to high-skilled workers, increased from a ratio of two in 1980 to almost four in 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to a large labour pool (labour pooling) leads to local economic concentrations through agglomeration economies. However, these concentrations may be self-limiting by reducing labour availability through competition over high-skill workers. This paper examines whether labour pooling and labour availability of workers with different incomes account for local job growth in the Atlanta metropolitan area between 2000 and 2006. Workers’ income is employed to account for the human capital of workers, including education and skills. It is found that the availability of high-income workers is the only positive significant factor for job growth and the spatial size of the effect is larger than the traffic analysis zone (neighbourhood scale). In contrast, no labour pooling indicators show a positive association with job growth. The finding casts doubt on labour pooling effects at the intraregional level and suggests avenues for further research on local-area agglomeration economies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public transit improvements could cause more clustered and higher-density employment and enable urban growth, giving rise to agglomeration economies by improving labour market accessibility, increasing information exchange and facilitating industrial specialisation. Using data on US metropolitan areas, this paper traces the links from transit service to central city employment density, urbanised area employment density and population; and from these physical agglomeration measures to average wages and per capita GMP. Significant indirect productivity effects of transit service are found. For example, in the case of central city employment density, estimated wage increases range between $1.5 million and $1.8 billion per metropolitan area yearly for a 10 per cent increase in transit seats or rail service miles per capita. Firms and households likely receive unanticipated agglomeration benefits from transit-induced densification and growth, and current benefit–cost evaluations may therefore underestimate the benefits of improving transit service, particularly in large cities with existing transit networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research has shown that the job access of the poor has been declining because of two major reasons: the spatial distribution of employment and housing, and socioeconomic restructuring. This paper aims to untangle the effects of the two factors on poor job seekers’ access to jobs in the Chicago metropolitan area from 1990 to 2010. Using census tracts as the unit of analysis, this research examines the effects of these two factors on the growth and distribution of poor job seekers and their matching jobs, as well as the consequential changes in job demand, supply and job access across the study area. Results show that spatial changes have increased job accessibility for the poor while socioeconomic transformation has adversely affected it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines the potential role that airfreight transport in the US can play in stimulating local and regional economic development. The analysis examines trends in employment and income for metropolitan statistical areas that make use of airfreight services. The focus is on causality, and not on simple correlation, and uses econometric analysis rather than simpler economic multiplier approaches. Granger causality testing based on panel data covering 35 airport and 32 metropolitan statistical areas in the US from 1990 to 2009 indicates that airfreight transport was a positive driver for local economic development. The conclusions focus on the strengths but also the weaknesses of the methodology for assessing causality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

United States (US) based research suggests that distance between residency and employment constrains labour market outcomes for black Americans. Work on this phenomenon, termed spatial mismatch, suggests that residential segregation from whites shapes labour market outcomes among blacks by restricting access to job-dense suburbs. However, few studies examine patterns and drivers of spatial mismatch among Asian and Hispanic subpopulations. Using data on job counts from the 2010 Zip Code Business Patterns data set and on population counts from the 2010 US decennial Censuses, I estimate spatial mismatch for the largest ethnoracial groups in the USA: black, white, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese Americans. To measure spatial mismatch, I create indices of dissimilarity between jobs and residency for all Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) with available data. Estimates of spatial mismatch based on panethnic categories mask subpopulation heterogeneity. Most subgroups experience higher spatial mismatch than indicated by the panethnic category. The results also show novel racial differences: the average Vietnamese and Cuban American experience higher spatial mismatch than the average black American. Segregation from whites is a central predictor of exposure to spatial mismatch across all minority groups, though findings suggest that this relationship is not driven by suburbanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US manufacturing policies increasingly steer resources toward the act of innovation. Emerging case-study evidence suggests that this innovation leads to manufacturing job growth. However, the case-study evidence from which this claim is assembled is incomplete and selective. Using regional-level industry-occupation data for US manufacturing sectors, we test the contribution of manufacturing innovation activities to production employment growth within US regions, for the 2000-2006 and 2006-2010 periods. While production employment continued to disperse from sites of historical manufacturing concentration over both time periods, innovation activities provided some advantages. From 2000 to 2006, regions with higher innovation concentrations in high-tech and medium-low technology industries, experienced slower rates of production employment decline. From 2006 to 2010, a period spanning the Great Recession, innovation activities were associated with reduced production job losses for industries of all technology levels. These results indicate that innovation has benefits beyond high-technology industries, but that those benefits are limited and selective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Great Recession in the US, there were distinct housing and labour markets that were particularly hard hit. This was primarily due to the fact that the housing industry had fueled much of the recent economic growth. This article takes advantage of the shock to the construction industry to investigate the responses of Latino immigrants in metropolitan areas that were most heavily concentrated with Latino immigrants in the construction industry. As expected, there were large declines in the proportion of the Latino immigrant population that was working in the construction industry during the recession. There were some shifts of employment in the industry after the recession, but the biggest change was in the number of unemployed. While declines in construction jobs did predict moving out of a metropolitan area, decline in the overall job market had a larger impact on mobility. Finally, we find evidence that those who moved out of the metropolitan area were less likely to be employed, although it is not possible to determine whether they would have been employed in their previous location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some postulate that spatially targeted grants and tax cuts stimulate jobs and establishment openings, and reduce closures in distressed urban neighbourhoods. The scholarly literature is mixed and mostly argues that at best these programmes have no impact and at worst raise land rents, spurring gentrification. The USA designated three rounds of Renewal Communities, Empowerment Zones or Enterprise Communities (RC/EZ/EC) to receive wage credits or grants. While others have estimated the impact of Round I EZ/ECs, this article estimates the impact of more recent rounds in Tennessee and California on job and businesses using propensity score matching. Data are presented by RC/EZ for retail, very small and minority establishments. Jobs increased in RC/EZs compared with control areas during the wage credit period. In general, establishment openings rose for small establishments but fell for retail. Closures overall fell. Future place-based initiatives should be strategic about industry mix and minority establishments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A significant number of immigrants fail to realise their full potential in the US labour markets, as evidenced by those working in occupations requiring skill levels far below their own level of education. While previous studies have studied immigrant underemployment with a focus on individual labour force characteristics, the spatial dimensions of immigrant underemployment have been largely overlooked. Using microdata from the 2006–2010 American Community Survey and a multilevel research design, this study examines the interaction of metropolitan labour market characteristics with individual labour force’s underemployment experiences, and explores how these interaction effects differ between the foreign-born and the native-born. Results suggest that the probability of individual labour force’s underemployment within any metropolitan area is highly contingent on metropolitan labour market characteristics including ethnic diversity, the proportion of its foreign-born population, the economic structure, and the level of educational attainment of the labour force, in addition to individual characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Traffic congestion alleviation has long been a common core transport policy objective, but it remains unclear under which conditions this universal byproduct of urban life also impedes the economy. Using panel data for 88 US metropolitan statistical areas, this study estimates congestion’s drag on employment growth (1993 to 2008) and productivity growth per worker (2001 to 2007). Using instrumental variables, results suggest that congestion slows job growth above thresholds of approximately 4.5 minutes of delay per one-way auto commute and 11,000 average daily traffic (ADT) per lane on average across the regional freeway network. While higher ADT per freeway lane appears to slow productivity growth, there is no evidence of congestion-induced travel delay impeding productivity growth. Results suggest that the strict policy focus on travel time savings may be misplaced and, instead, better outlooks for managing congestion’s economic drag lie in prioritising the economically most important trips (perhaps through road pricing) or in providing alternative travel capacity to enable access despite congestion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As air transport for leisure trips, business travel and goods shipment increased rapidly over the past several decades, the emergence of airport cities has been hypothesised. Busy commercial airports may be emerging as central transport nodes in large metropolitan areas, much as ports and rail terminals were in the past, anchoring employment servicing passengers, facilitating frequent travellers and providing a spatial focus for unrelated firms. An analysis of small-area employment data for the areas surrounding 25 major US airports and the related central cities reveals the concentration of employment within 2.5 miles of these airports to be substantial—approximately half that within 2.5 miles of the central point of the corresponding CBDs—and growing. The analysis refocuses a question about the nature of spatial differentiation within metropolitan regions supporting multiple employment nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two significant trends have occurred in urban areas across the US during recent decades: immigration and the decentralisation of employment. While each trend has been investigated by research, the magnitude of spatial disparity between immigrant settlement patterns and employment location and its change over time has received much less attention. Using a sample of the 60 largest immigrant metropolitan areas, this study uses a spatial mismatch index and regression methods to address this question over the period 1980–2000. Results indicate that immigrants are more spatially mismatched with job opportunities than the White population, but less so than the Black population. It is found that job growth occurred close to where the native-born Whites concentrate and away from immigrants and other minority populations. However, immigrants’ residential location patterns shifted towards employment opportunities and was able to offset the otherwise enlarging spatial disparity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Metropolitan areas vary widely in employment distribution and labour accessibility. Comparing four US metropolitan areas–Atlanta, Boston, Phoenix and Washington, DC—it is found that Atlanta and Washington, DC suffer from low labour accessibility compared with Boston and Phoenix. Moreover, large suburban employment centres in Atlanta and Washington, DC suffer from even lower accessibility than other employment centres within the same metropolitan areas or their counterparts in Boston and Phoenix. Their low labour accessibility is mainly explained by slower commuting speeds. Even though their residential and employment densities are modest, congestion in these employment centres is severe enough to undermine accessibility. The results raise questions about the effectiveness of creating large sub-centres in metropolitan areas, particularly creating auto-oriented edge-city-style employment centres at highway nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]