Study Shows How Recovery From The Great Recession Transformed The Geography of U.S. Economic Well-Being

Study finds it took under five years for prosperous communities to replace lost jobs while distressed ones are unlikely to ever recover on current trendlines.  The Economic Innovation Group (EIG) released a new report, From Great Recession to Great Reshuffling: Charting a Decade of Change Across American Communities, tracking changes in the well-being of U.S. communities during a tumultuous decade that included the Great Recession and the subsequent economic recovery. The report is based on findings from the 2018 Distressed Communities Index (DCI), a research project that measures and maps the economic well-being of U.S. zip codes, cities, counties, and congressional districts.The Great Reshuffling has had both positive and negative implications for American communities. Prosperity and population are becoming more closely linked, as the best-off communities are home to a rapidly growing number of Americans. Prosperous zip codes alone saw an increase of over 10 million residents between the two periods studied. However, even as the number of Americans living in a distressed zip code shrinks, the gaps in well-being separating communities are growing wider.“Ten years after the financial crisis, these findings are a sobering reminder that far too many communities have yet to see a true recovery,” said EIG President and CEO John Lettieri. “While there is much to celebrate about the strength of the U.S. economy, the national numbers are becoming less reflective of local realities. We must do far better at ensuring opportunity spreads to every corner of the map.”The study found that the U.S. experienced a widely-shared recession followed by a deeply fractured recovery. Communities across the board saw a surprisingly similar decline in absolute number of jobs during the recession, but prosperous areas dominated the recovery, generating more net new jobs and businesses than the rest of the nation combined, while increasing their human capital advantage in the process.