The Great Recession and America's Geography of Unemployment.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1. IntroductionThe Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 was the most severe and lengthy economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Precipitous decreases in housing values and ownership, employment, and equity markets contributed to marked declines in the economic wellbeing of many Americans. These changes also triggered several broad social and demographic changes that will likely have significant consequences in years to come. Although the Great Recession has been framed as a national phenomenon (Mitchell 2013), its effects varied considerably across different places within the country (Campbell and Sances 2013; Coleman-Jensen 2012; Owens and Cook 2013; Slack and Myers 2012). Such spatial variation in the recession's impact has likely reshaped social and economic inequality between places and across broader geographic spaces. Yet the precise extent and character of such changes remain unknown, as do the factors that differentiated recession impacts between places. Were pre-recession trends in spatial inequality exacerbated by the Recession, or has it produced a qualitatively new social and economic geography in the United States (US)? To what extent does variation in the recession's impact between places reflect differences in population composition versus structural factors? These and related questions remain largely unanswered to date.This paper attempts to address these issues, and to contribute to knowledge about spatial inequality more broadly by examining recession-related changes in the distribution of one specific measure of economic wellbeing - the unemployment rate - between US counties and states, and by identifying population and place characteristics that underlie such changes. Our focus on unemployment is motivated by the central role work plays in many aspects of social and economic life in the US. We argue that understanding unemployment dynamics at the local level can provide insight into how the recession affected broader forms of social and economic disadvantage and its distribution across local areas. These findings may be of interest to policymakers planning for future downturns. By knowing the characteristics of places that were disproportionally impacted by the recession, federal, state, and local leaders can anticipate the types of communities most likely to be negatively affected.To reach our overall goal we address three specific objectives. First, we describe recession-related changes in the distribution of unemployment prevalence between counties and within and between states. Second, we identify geographic clusters of counties that experienced similar changes in unemployment during the recession. Third, we use spatial regression to evaluate associations between county-level changes in unemployment during the recession and demographic composition, industrial structure, and state context. Our findings contribute new evidence regarding the Great Recession's spatially uneven effects on local labor markets and communities, and yield new insight into the social and demographic forces shaping local vulnerability to macroeconomic change.2. Work, labor markets, and the Great RecessionWe examine the recession's impact on local labor markets, which we measure by tracking changes in county unemployment rates. Our focus on unemployment is motivated by the centrality of work (or lack thereof) in the lives of most Americans, and the consequences of changing work patterns for individuals and the communities they inhabit. Given the strong links between unemployment and multiple forms of social and economic disadvantage (Brand 2015), county unemployment rates serve as a proxy for the prevalence of disadvantaged populations and a broad set of correlated social problems at the local level.Formal work remains the most widespread means of accumulating economic resources. In 2013 the official US poverty rate was 14.5%. However, it was 32. …