Quote:
Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright
It's a bizarre way of measuring things... Share of national job gains? By that measure places with lots of new Amazon warehouses that employ 2500 people each and pay them $10/hr to sit in a 100 degree warehouse are going to look better than places where Google or Facebook added 1000 developer jobs.
It's very strange to measure things not based on percentage growth but to then list the numbers as a percentage of something. The way I'm understanding this is that it's not really a measure of economic or job growth as much as it is a measure of population growth. Places people are migrating to are going to have a higher number of "job gains" than slow growing massive metros. That's why Detroit shows up, because people are returning there rapidly so it looks good by this measure.
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But the chart shows the exact opposite. It shows the biggest increases occurred in places with a large highly skilled workforce.
As for Detroit, it does have a large engineering talent pool, but until recently, that pool has been geared towards mechanical, logistical, supply chain, etc -- the less sexy engineering jobs. However, Silicon Valley's encroachment onto automotive turf has sparked an industry Cold War over the past 5 - 10 years. They are all fighting to become "mobility" companies, instead of companies that sell cars. The German automakers are deep into this as well. I don't know if that's the complete story behind Detroit's rebound, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a major factor.