All job creation is local, which makes national unemployment numbers flawed as a measure overall economic activity. Nothing shows this better than recent data on job creation by city, although the cities with the best job creation rates are an odd mix of areas that have been deeply troubled over the course of the recession and those that were barely touched by the downturn.

According to new Gallup data, the top five cities based on job creation in 2012 were, in order: Houston; Columbus, Ohio; Orlando, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; and Salt Lake City. Houston dodged the downturn to some extent because of the oil industry. Orlando, on the other hand, was part of the collapse in Florida employment largely due to the battered real estate market.

Not every Florida city was so fortunate. Among the five cities that posted the lowest level of job creation last year was Jacksonville. Riverside, Calif.; San Diego; New York; and Buffalo, N.Y., were at the bottom. Buffalo’s presence is easy to understand. It is among the American cities that were part of the industrial belt, which stretched as far west as Illinois. Riverside’s presence makes sense as well. It is in the region of central California where the unemployment levels remain above 15% in several cities.

Gallup summed up the results:

Americans may not feel the United States’ economic woes are over until the unemployment situation improves substantially, and a key to that is for hiring activity to continue to improve in the biggest U.S. cities and their surrounding suburbs.

What Gallup does not mention is that there are no plans, at the level of the federal government at least, to bring the areas hardest hit by joblessness and those that have not recovered up to near the national average. This means those locations will continue to struggle indefinitely.

Methodology: Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2012, with random samples of adults, aged 18 and older, living in the 50 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas by population.

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.