Back at the beginning of this century, there was a lot of discussion on the rise of the creative or knowledge economy as being at the forefront of future of American economic prosperity. We all heard about how technology made us vastly more productive, and industry sectors across the board took advantage. Of course, the creative or knowledge economy was driven by the coastal metros that had distinct advantages in developing, producing and attracting the talent needed.
Fast forward 25 years. Today, it’s widely accepted that this transformation has taken place. In fact, two things have happened since 2000: 1) the creative economy has expanded beyond its coastal roots to other parts of the country; and 2) the expansion, and the economic disruption it engendered, gave rise to the political and cultural backlash we’ve experienced over the last ten years, with the rise of the MAGA movement and Donald Trump as a political figure.
I’d argue that the changes over the last ten years have taken our attention away from looking at how our knowledge-driven economy is still transforming; we’ve been caught up in nonstop news cycles of head-spinning news and disinformation, pandemic and recovery, and pitched cultural battles. But even as this continues, I think it still matters that we accept the transformation that’s taking place and look at how metro economies continue to restructure themselves to benefit from it.
In other words, we may not have the economy we all want, but we have the economy we have. Let’s take a look at metros that are making meaningful gains at strengthening the economies they have.
With that in mind I did an analysis of changes in educational attainment for the nation’s 55 largest metro areas (those with more than one million residents) between 2020-2023. I grabbed U.S. Census American Community Survey data to see which metros were making strides in developing, producing and attracting the educated talent still needed to succeed in today’s economy. For now I’m simply focusing on the change in the number of people aged 25 or more in metro areas with a bachelor's degree or advanced/professional degree during the 2020-2023 period. I know it’s a short timeframe, but I selected it because I wanted to minimize the impact of the pandemic on the numbers. Also, I considered including changes in metro area GDP or personal income in the analysis, to confirm correlations between educational attainment and economic productivity, but decided to do just one thing at a time.
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Pete Saunders is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy. Pete has been the editor/publisher of the Corner Side Yard, an urbanist blog, since 2012. Pete is also an urban affairs contributor to Forbes Magazine's online platform. Pete's writings have been published widely in traditional and internet media outlets, including the feature article in the December 2018 issue of Planning Magazine. Pete has more than twenty years' experience in planning, economic development, and community development, with stops in the public, private and non-profit sectors. He lives in Chicago.
Photo: Jens Schott Knudsen via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
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