Posted on 12/16/2011 8:08:00 AM PST by SeekAndFind
We wish that we could call this list, "The Happiest Cities In America." But right now every city in America is suffering.
The least miserable cities might surprise you, including Pittsburgh and Buffalo. These cities experienced less of a boom during the bubble, so they're finding it easier to recover.
Conversely the most miserable cities are mostly housing bubble capitals.
Our list is based on an index from Brookings including unemployment rate and change in employment, home prices and gross metro product since before the recession.
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#20 McAllen, Texas
Unemployment rate of 12.2%
Employment up 2.0% from peak
Gross metro product up 7.0% from pre-recession peak Home prices down 12.4% from peak Third quarter
data provided by the Brookings MetroMonitor.
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#19 Hartford, Connecticut
Unemployment rate of 8.4%
Employment down 1.54% from peak
Gross metro product down 7.4% from pre-recession peak Home prices down 21.6% from peak
Third quarter data provided by the Brookings MetroMonitor.
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#18 Nashville, Tennessee
Unemployment rate of 8.5%
Employment down 3.1% from peak
Gross metro product up 6.1% from pre-recession peak Home prices down 15.3% from peak
Third quarter data provided by the Brookings MetroMonitor.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
See here also for the MOST miserable cities in America:
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-miserable-cities-america-2011-12#20-toledo-ohio-1
Albany? Syracuse? Buffalo? LOL
Of the three, Albany is the least miserable and it’s still about an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Meanwhile, a city where things are really happening and things are really not miserable like Greenville SC doesn’t make the list.
Seems to be a common thread in those ‘miserable’ cities...
A recent article in our local fishwrap shows that we alone have accounted for 14% of the recent anemic growth nationwide.
I would advise any Freeper who has been out of work a long time to seriously consider the Pittsburgh area. As an added bonus, our politics are swinging conservative big time. Our county, just southeast of Pittsburgh, just swept every Democrat out of every single country row office and the commission majority. The last time that happened was when Eisenhower was at the peak of his popularity.
What did Pittsburgh do right that Detroit did not do?
The steel industry went downhill a long time back....
Had a better football team?
“the MOST miserable cities”
Wow! Cleveland didn’t make that list? Great pic for Detroitistan!
But, basically, it has been transformed from a steel city into a city of colleges and hospitals. With the exception of the Mon Valley most of the ring counties still have a lot of small manufacturing and fabrication establishments making everything from high tech medical equipment to auto parts.
It’s because after 1981, there was nowhere to go but up. About 250,000 manufacturing jobs went away, starting when Mellon called their note on Mesta machine. (The Mellons were trying to get liquid so they could get into the oil business back when the price of oil was even more outrageous than it is now.)
The population of the city Pittsburgh itself has contracted 50% from its peak back in the early 60’s. It’s down 10% in the past decennial.
The metro area has had sustained but not such an extensive outflow.
Vigilanteman is right that medicine and higher ed are the drivers. Health Insurance - Highmark is a big employer downtown. Banking is too - BNY, PNC and Citizens being the biggest.
Steel is still around - somewhat. The Mon Valley works of USS and a bunch of specialty makers like ATI. Marcellus is booming too.
However, the commies in the government have been unrelenting in their drive to destroy the economy. City council issued a proclamation siding with the Occupiers against the biggest employers in Downtown. All of the municipalities are fighting to enact drilling bans and demonizing fracking. The Amercian Lung Association and every leftist pressure group is fighting to shut down the coal-fired powerplants that give the region a competitive advantage on energy costs (Asthma! It’s for the Chillrun!). And striving to implement the end state of Obeyme Care - gobmint ‘healthcare’ which will kill the advanced medical research and care and put the insurers out of business.
If it wasn’t for them, the region’s economic output would be twice what it is. How do they stay in power? Too many folks around here are congenital Democrats. The ‘Republicans are for the rich’ meme is encoded in their DNA. This is starting to change, though, as evidenced by the Westmoreland County stunner.
If this story is correct, Dallas is the most miserable city in the entire country as Dallas stole the Alamo from San Antonio.
Interesting; 5 of the 10 are in Texas.
I’ve been transplanted to near Albany for 7 of the last 11 years, did a stint of nearly 4 years in Syracuse and traveled to Buffalo regularly for business...I totally agree with your assessment, Albany is the least miserable, Syracuse only slightly more miserable and Buffalo is downright depressing, there’s a whole fog of depression around that area...that can’t be written by anyone familiar with upstate NY as there are 50+ cities better than any of those three...
what’s next for the happy spot, Utica? Rome?
Most of the “most miserable” cities are in California - no wonder with pols like Boxer and Moonbeam running the show.
When Buffalo shows up on the Least Miserable list, you know we’re in a world of hurt.
I followed their links to the MOST Miserable countries.
It is hard to take seriously any “reporter” who compiles a list of Most Miserable Countries and omits:
Zimbabwe
Somalia
Chad
Central African Republic
Syria
Iraq
Iran
Any of the various Congos.
“The Second Congo War, beginning in 1998, devastated the country and is sometimes referred to as the “African world war” because it involved nine African nations and some twenty armed groups.[4] Despite the signing of peace accords in 2003, fighting continues in the east of the country. In eastern Congo, the prevalence of rape and other sexual violence is described as the worst in the world.[5] The war is the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II, killing 5.4 million people since 1998.[6][7] The vast majority died from malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition.[8]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo
I think Afghanistan should be on that list, too.
Definitely!
What struck me is how many of those 20 were in California and Florida, if you look at loss of home value. That has to trap a lot of people that would like to get out.
I did a 6 year stretch near Albany myself. Now, I’m in a place with beautiful weather and my property taxes are 1/5 of what they were back there for a house twice as large. There are no tolls every time I want to get somewhere and no POS cops lurking around every corner to justify their salary by harassing the citizenry.
Everything (with the exception of dairy products) is cheaper here. The people are happier and more pleasant. It’s night and day.
I hope a few gullible liberals from nicer parts of the country buy this crapola and move there looking for paradise. At least it’ll get the few we have here to go somewhere else.
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