Fargo and Bismarck With Lowest Unemployment Nationally

This posting will eventually be moved to "I Can't Make This Stuff Up," but it points out how fortunate North Dakotans are.

This was published by the Associated Press on Friday, March 19, 2010: the four cities that best weathered the recession.

The four cities: Buffalo, NY; Rochester, NY; Oklahoma City; and, Mineeapolis.

Why? Because their jobless rate had the smallest increases over the past two years among cities with at least 1 million people.

Minneapolis: jobless rate, only 7.7%. The medical equipment industry in Minneapolis is credited with this "success."

Oklahoma City: jobless rate, only 6.7%. One-fifth (20%) of city's workers are employed by the state or local government. And even during a recession, governments don't cut employees. In addition, Federal stimulus money saved the government's budget and avoid layoffs. That's hardly good news.

Buffalo: jobless rate, 9.2 percent but the reporter says, happily, that Buffalo's "rate is below the national rate of 9.7 percent."  If that isn't ludicrous on its own, the reporter goes on to say that Buffalo was in so much economic trouble before the recession, it couldn't go much lower during the recession: ""Buffalo's jobless rate rose only 2.9 percentage points during the recession."  The dollar's plummet in value also resulted in Canadian shoppers flooding into Buffalo to take advantage of the weak US dollar against the Canadian dollar. In addition, Buffalo diversified out of heavy manufacturing industries (in other words: factories closed) into areas like health care (where wages and salaries are significantly lower for non-college graduates, the majority of workers in the health care system (technical and vocational nurses, receptionists, clerks, orderlies, custodial, laboratory technicians. Even entry level nurses probably earn less than steel workers.).

And finally, Rochester: the jobless rate here only grew 3 percent to only 8.7 percent, again well below Buffalo's 9.2 unemployment rate and the national rate of 9.7 Its economy has also diversified: its largest employer is now the University of Rochester. No, the university did not grow as much as Kodiak, based in that city, shrunk.

These are just the unemployment rates; the reporter did not address underemployment.

The article concludes by saying the unemployment rose in nearly all 372 metropolitan areas in January, but among cities of all sizes, the lowest unemployment rates were in Fargo, ND, and Bismarck, ND, 4.8 and 4.9 percent, respectively.