US policy has the flexibility to aid inflexible places

Subject

US regional economic disparities.

Significance

People, jobs and technology change faster than places. Some locations are left more attractive to new technologies, companies and workers; more languish. Citizens have responded by becoming more educated and moving to high-skilled, higher-paying talent hubs, but many are stranded without the means to join a modern workforce. This disaffected group is contributing to the rise in populist voting. Government programmes to integrate them into the changing workforce have been largely absent this century.

Impacts

• Mobile people will respond to incentives, moving to the jobs and obtaining job-required skills and education.
• Less mobile people in high unemployment areas would benefit from more job creation and pro-employment policies.
• Non-metropolitan populations are ageing as opportunities for less educated people are increasingly disappearing in major cities.
• The ‘left behind’ with few prospects will continue to feed the opioid epidemic and the ranks of the registered disabled.
• City unaffordability may yet validate the unproven 1990s' ‘Death of distance’ theory that connectivity diminishes clustering.