Three U.S. Cities Have Recovered to Prerecession Levels

The new Brookings Institution Global MetroMonitor shows that only three of 300 U.S. metropolitan areas have recovered to prerecession levels. The research also showed the rise of emerging economies and the struggles of the old developed ones:

Three-quarters of the fastest-growing metropolitan economies in 2012 were located in developing Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. By contrast, almost 90 percent of the slowest-growing metro economies were in Western Europe and North America.

The report was based mostly on data from Oxford Economics, Moody’s Analytics and the U.S. Census Bureau. In the United States, the only cities with economies that have recovered to prerecession levels are Knoxville, Dallas and Pittsburgh. That leaves all other large metro areas in America either still in recession, or very near one.

Douglas A. McIntyre