Employment has suffered the most in Detroit (no big surprise there). However, there are some surprises in the other rankings, including which markets have held up the best.
A word on methodology. I looked at the highest employment level in each market since January, 2000, and compared it to the latest level. All data is from BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics.
Here are the results:
| Employment as of November, 2008 | Peak Since 1/2000 | Current | Change from Peak | % Change from Peak |
| Detroit | 2,217,186 | 1,899,782 | (317,404) | -14.32% |
| San Jose | 962,408 | 845,417 | (116,991) | -12.16% |
| San Francisco-Oakland | 2,250,832 | 2,138,050 | (112,782) | -5.01% |
| Chicago | 4,721,131 | 4,542,407 | (178,724) | -3.79% |
| Los Angeles | 6,307,149 | 6,098,378 | (208,771) | -3.31% |
| Riverside-San Bernadino | 1,711,443 | 1,658,533 | (52,910) | -3.09% |
| Atlanta | 2,650,838 | 2,569,010 | (81,828) | -3.09% |
| Washington DC | 2,967,601 | 2,882,203 | (85,398) | -2.88% |
| Miami | 2,739,126 | 2,668,358 | (70,768) | -2.58% |
| Orlando | 1,070,271 | 1,048,644 | (21,627) | -2.02% |
| Denver | 1,346,897 | 1,323,378 | (23,519) | -1.75% |
| San Diego | 1,485,911 | 1,468,666 | (17,245) | -1.16% |
| Sacramento | 1,003,441 | 994,697 | (8,744) | -0.87% |
| Dallas | 3,023,034 | 3,005,173 | (17,861) | -0.59% |
| San Antonio | 906,335 | 902,089 | (4,246) | -0.47% |
| Austin | 831,555 | 829,083 | (2,472) | -0.30% |
| Houston | 2,680,121 | 2,675,806 | (4,315) | -0.16% |
| Las Vegas | 936,369 | 934,956 | (1,413) | -0.15% |
| Phoenix | 2,022,781 | 2,022,725 | (56) | 0.00% |
Detroit employment peaked in June, 2000, and has lost jobs ever since. Here is a chart showing year over year job loss for this market:
(Click on charts to open larger versions in new windows)
The market with the second worse performance is San Jose. It, along with San Francisco (to a much lesser extent), has never fully recovered job losses sustained in the dotcom bust. Here is the year over year chart for San Jose:
The best performing markets are also something of a surprise: Las Vegas and Phoenix. Both of these markets have severely distressed housing markets, and the conventional wisdom is housing difficulties drag down employment. Here are the charts for these two markets:
Finally, let’s discuss Riverside-San Bernardino for a minute. There is no question this market is hurting – I’ve discussed it previously here and here. But, a Bloomberg story with Calculated Risk commentary suggests a parallel between Detroit and this market because both have the same high (9.5%) unemployment rate. I think it’s wrong to suggest Detroit’s situation, which has had sustained job losses for eight years totaling 14.3% of it’s peak employment base, is similar to Riverside-San Bernardino, which has only lost jobs for a little more than a year and is down a little more than 3% from it’s peak. I’ve previously argued unemployment is not a good measure of market distress, because it’s possible to have very high unemployment rates and still have positive employment growth.
You can download a free report which provides similar employment charts on many other markets here.
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