Personal income growth slowed in 2007 in most of the nation's metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), according to estimates released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. On average, MSA personal income grew 6.2% in 2007, down from 6.8% in 2006. Personal income growth slowed in 208 MSAs, increased in 144, and remained unchanged in 11 MSAs.

The twenty slowest growing MSAs were all in the Great Lakes Region (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin). Personal income growth in most of these MSAs was one-half the national pace or less as compensation declined in the durable goods manufacturing sector, often by substantial amounts. In some cases, compensation in 2006 had been boosted by the acceptance of employee buyout offers from automakers while 2007 compensation reflected a smaller workforce and pay concessions in the auto and auto parts industries.

From the archive:

A substantial portion of our workforce finds itself in direct competition for jobs with lower-wage workers around the globe, and leading-edge scientific and engineering work is being accomplished in many parts of the world. Thanks to globalization, driven by modern communications and other advances, workers in virtually every sector must now face competitors who live just a mouse-click away in Ireland, Finland, China, India, or dozens of other nations whose economies are growing.

"We're in so deep that it doesn't seem like anything will help," said Rebekah Ao, 33, a pregnant homemaker who lives in a new four-bedroom home in Avondale with her husband, Otto, a truck driver. The Aos, with $50,000 in income, owe a total of $607,000 on mortgages for two houses they bought since they moved to the Phoenix area about two years ago.

Personal Income for Metropolitan Areas, 2007

Atlanta is hosed, yes, but Ohio is really hosed.

The turmoil of the mortgage market granted a temporary reprieve from hearing about the woes of America's Rust Belt. That doesn't mean things are better. Despite a decade of national prosperity, the former manufacturing backbone of the U.S. is in rougher shape than ever, still searching for some way to replace its long-stilled smokestacks.

Where's it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities--Detroit and Flint--making the ranking.

From the archive:

As no repairs have been carried out for 34 years, all of the buildings are slowly falling apart. Nature is reclaiming the area, as metal corrodes, windows break, and plants work their roots into the walls and pavements.

Andrucha Waddington directs this epic drama that explores how daughters ultimately become their mothers.

The bubble cycle has replaced the business cycle.

Income and net worth are two important factors in determining economic well-being in the United States. This report looks at net worth and asset ownership by various socioeconomic factors, including monthly income. The data come from the Survey of Income and Program Participation.

Welcome to the new Korean craze of "well-dying". In a country infatuated with "well-being" - living and eating healthily, even to the point where tobacco-makers offer vitamin-enriched "well-being cigarettes" - training companies are now offering courses on dying a good death.

We should expect a prolonged, grinding decline in home prices, back to more or less their pre-bubble inflation-adjusted levels.

America's Fastest-Dying Cities

PolicyMap is a revolutionary, easy, new way to explore geographic data through maps, tables and reports.

PolicyMap

Decius wrote:

Unless there is some detail that I'm missing, this sounds positively orwellian.

According to Sense Networks, all the location data that it gathers from mobile phones, GPS and Wi-Fi is completely anonymous so privacy should not be an issue.

It's not an issue, okay?!?

See also, from recent NYT:

Sense’s models were developed initially from sources like taxicab companies that let it look at location data over such a period. Sense also uses publicly available data, like weather information, and other nonpublic sources that it would not disclose.

Reality mining raises instant questions about privacy, especially when cellphone data is involved. In the United States, it is illegal in many cases for cellphone companies to share customers’ location data without their consent.

Mr. Skibiski says that Sense is interested only in aggregate data and that it’s looking for broad patterns, not the specific behavior of individuals. But he recognizes the privacy issue.

RE: Citysense - Powered by Sense Networks

This is a large photoset of old New York.

See also, A Little More New York in Black and White.

New York in Black and White

This seems like something we've talked about before.

Citysense was built to show you where the action is, right now.

When the Mission or Soma is busier than normal – you'll know immediately.

Citysense is an application that operates on the Sense Networks Macrosense platform, which analyzes massive amounts of aggregate, anonymous location data in real-time. Macrosense is already being used by business people for things like selecting store locations and understanding retail demand. But we asked ourselves: with all this real-time data, what else could we do for a city? Nightlife enhancement was the obvious answer. This release is just a test, and we're interested in your feedback on how to make the application better. You'll find a feedback button in Citysense.

Citysense - Powered by Sense Networks

In my experience, many people believe that New Yorkers are smarter than other Americans, and this may actually be true. ... New Yorkers are people who left another place and came here, looking for something, which suggests that the population is preselected for higher energy and ambition.

I think it's possible that New Yorkers just appear smarter, because they make less separation between private and public life. That is, they act on the street as they do in private. In the United States today, public behavior is ruled by a kind of compulsory cheer that people probably picked up from television and advertising and that coats their transactions in a smooth, shiny glaze, making them seem empty-headed. New Yorkers have not yet gotten the knack of this. That may be because so many of them grew up outside the United States, and also because they live so much of their lives in public, eating their lunches in parks, riding to work in subways. It's hard to keep up the smiley face for that many hours a day.

You got a problem with that?

A black bear is being sought by New Jersey police on suspicion of stealing a minivan.

A Worrisome Precedent

Just months ago, Northern Virginia residents and elected officials were expecting hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements to such roads. Now, because of budget cuts and state lawmakers' failure to reach a deal on regional transportation funding, drivers can expect only more misery.

Little Relief For Choked Secondary Roads in Virginia

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released estimates of personal income at the county level for 2006 based on newly available source data. Personal income is a comprehensive measure of the income of all persons from all sources. In addition to wages and salaries it includes employer–provided health insurance, dividends and interest income, social security benefits, and other types of income.

Local Area Personal Income, 2006