2016 Postmortem

Researchers looked at three of the last recoveries in the U.S. economy: 1992-1996, 2002-2006, and 2010-2014. They found an ominous and specifically geographic change: In the 1990s recovery, business and job creation was widespread across the country, with less dense and less populous counties of 500,000 people or less generating 71 percent of all new business establishments. In the 2010s, that figure plummeted to 19 percent. Instead, it was counties with more than 500,000 people generating 81 percent of new businesses. And the bulk of the change took place for counties with over a million people.

...the problem isn't just that dense counties and major cities account for way more of the country's economic vibrancy than they used to. It's that the total amount of economic activity has collapsed: In the 1990s and the 2000s recoveries, 420,850 and 400,390 new business establishments were created, respectively. But in the 2010s recovery following the Great Recession, that fell to 166,460.

Business creation didn't just move to the cities. It shrank — massively. Cities and dense counties were just the islands left over after the waters rose everywhere else.

Counties with more than a million people did a bit better in the 2010s than they did in the 1990s. But not a lot better. By contrast, counties with less than 500,000 people have gone into a complete tailspin.

In the 1990s, just 17 percent of counties saw a net decline in business establishments. That number ballooned to 58 percent in the 2010s. Net job decline went from 14 percent of counties to 31 percent. Population decline spread from 22 percent of counties to 54 percent.

Rural communities are dying, economically and literally, and the rural Americans who can are fleeing to big cities. That means a massive shift in demand for housing towards the remaining economic safe harbors: cities.