Report: Philly’s Recovery From Recession is Lagging

Job growth, economic output at the low end of the scale.

The Brookings Institution reports that Philly’s recovery from the recession is lagging behind most of the Top 100 metro areas in the country.

In its new Metro Monitor, the think tank reports that Philly has ranked 91st out of those 100 metropolitan areas — a combination that combines measures of the growth in jobs, reduction of unemployment, gross output, and house prices — since the recovery began.

That may be, in part, because the city didn’t fall that far to begin with: Brookings indicates that by the same measurement, Philadelphia had the 26th-most resilient economy during the recession itself. (Then again, given the persistence of long-term poverty and unemployment in the community, we may not have had that far to fall in the first place.)

Overall, putting the recession and recovery together, Brookings says Philadelphia had the 61st-best performing economy among big cities — just behind the middle of the pack.

One bit of good news: The city’s strongest job-growth sector during the last year is in the construction sector. Those jobs are relatively well-paying — and that might explain why Philadelphians have seen so many cranes dotting the skyline.