Finding the Next Nashville: Job Growth and Job Sector Diversity in Cities

By Luis Quintero and Mac McComas | Research sponsored by Alex. Brown Realty, Inc.

Cities are dynamic places where populations and jobs rise and fall over time. In 1950, St. Louis was the eighth largest city in the U.S. with a population over 850,000. Today, the “Gateway to the West” is home to just over 300,000 people making it the 65th largest city in the U.S. In the 1960s, Philadelphia was home to over 260,000 jobs in manufacturing, accounting for over a quarter of all jobs in the city. By 2018, it had just over 21,000 manufacturing jobs, accounting for just over two percent of all jobs in the city, and dropped from the fourth to the seventh largest city in the U.S. National and global economic shocks can cause large numbers of people and jobs to relocate or be displaced in response to changing incentives and competitive advantages. While New York and Chicago have remained among the top three largest cities in the U.S. for over 100 years, few places have enjoyed such long run success and few job sectors have thrived in the same place for such a long period of time. Given the dynamic nature of cities and the uncertainty over future economic turns, could diversity in job sectors help ensure the long run success and growth of cities?

This report is the third in a series (Finding the Next Nashville) that examines long term trends that could be contributing to the success of metropolitan areas and cities across the U.S. In this report, we focus on job sector diversity in metropolitan areas as an important factor in economic growth and resilience. We examine the relationship between job sector diversity and job growth in the 150 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. from 2000 to 2019.