Geography and American affluence

Alcatraz Island / San Francisco Bay, a photo by trudeau on Flickr.

The economic map of America today does not show just one country - it shows three increasingly different countries.

At one extreme are America’s brain hubs – cities like Seattle, Raleigh-Durham, Austin, Boston, New York and Washington DC – with a thriving innovation-driven economy and a labor force among the most creative and best paid on the planet, says Enrico Moretti.

The most striking example is San Francisco, where the labor market for tech workers is the strongest it has been in a decade.

At the other extreme are cities once dominated by traditional manufacturing – Detroit, Flint, Cleveland – with shrinking labor force and salaries.

In the middle there is the rest of America, apparently undecided on which direction to take.

Here is Moretti's article.