Long-needed numbers that illuminate broad and on-going national economic policy failure. Add this to mortality rates that mirror AIDs numbers…
“Our research over the past year has found that local economies today are more divergent in terms of jobs and business growth than at any point in modern history.
EIG analyzed the presidential election results through the lens of two previous economic reports, The Distressed Communities Index and The New Map of Economic Growth and Recovery. In doing so, we found considerable evidence that the ripple effects of a weak local recovery may indeed have tipped the race in the all-important swing counties.
First and foremost, it appears that business closures helped the president-elect poach counties that had voted for President Obama twice before. Of these 209 counties, roughly 75% saw more businesses close than open from 2010 to 2014. It’s important to note that these counties ran the gamut from affluent to distressed; highly educated to below average; overwhelmingly white to majority-minority. In spite of their many differences, a decline in business dynamism is where the vast majority found common ground.
Swing Counties Faced Higher than Average Rates of Unemployment, Job Losses, and Population Decline(fladem?)…Looking more broadly than swing counties alone, we see that the urban-rural divide in this election was perhaps the starkest it has ever been.
How Struggling Economies Helped Decide the 2016 Election