Journal Article

Educational attainment and recovery from recessions across metropolitan areas

Abstract: Metropolitan area business cycles vary considerably in both magnitude and duration. Some metro areas recover rapidly from downtowns, some take longer, and some never recover. Because recent recessions have involved employment changes at the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) supersector level that were both cyclical and structural, part of a metro area's recovery from a recession may include the process of workers adapting to new jobs in other industries. If worker adaptation is part of the recovery process, then metro areas with higher educational levels might be able to recover more quickly from recessions. This hypothesis is tested with multiple regression models of the 1990 and 2001 recessions. There is a significant and negative link between college attainment and the time it took for metropolitan areas to recover from the 2001 recession, but not from the 1990 recession.

Keywords: Metropolitan areas - Statistics; Education - Economic aspects; Business cycles;

Status: Published in The Third Annual Conference of the Business & Economics Research Group (BERG), in St. Louis, June 2007.

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Part of Series: Regional Economic Development

Publication Date: 2007

Issue: Nov

Pages: 43-52