ICYMI: "A Remarkable Comeback" for "Left Behind" Communities in U.S.

The American economy's great comeback story under President Biden continues. While the last administration "promised to revitalize [left-behind] areas," in fact those places faced "a particularly grim stretch" during that administration, with "three of their four worst years since the Great Recession on Trump's watch."

President Biden has turned that around, with growth that "we couldn't have even dreamed about five or six years ago." Investments in industries of the future are disproportionately benefitting communities that have been left behind but are making a comeback under President Biden.

Read more below:

New York Times: The Morning Newsletter: A Remarkable Comeback
[Jim Tankersley, 7/8/24]

"This is the kind of thing that we couldn't have even dreamed about five or six years ago," one expert said about changes in some American counties.

America's so-called "left behind" counties — the once-great manufacturing centers and other distressed places that struggled mightily at the start of this century — have staged a remarkable comeback. In the last three years, they added jobs and new businesses at their fastest pace since Bill Clinton was president.

The turnaround has shocked experts. "This is the kind of thing that we couldn't have even dreamed about five or six years ago," said John Lettieri, the president of the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank that studies economic distress in the U.S. His group is releasing a report today that details the recovery of left-behind counties.

Those counties span the nation but are largely concentrated in the Southeast and Midwest. In today's newsletter, I'll explain how they defied recent trends — including a particularly grim stretch under Donald Trump — to rebound so strongly from the pandemic recession. […]

Out of the recession

The last two decades were economically cruel for the 1,000 or so left-behind counties in the U.S. — places like Bay County, Mich.; Dyer County, Tenn.; and Lackawanna County, Pa., home to Scranton, Biden's birthplace. These counties added jobs and people far more slowly than the nation as a whole. Some lost factories to foreign competitors like China. Many lost residents, including educated young workers, as economic activity concentrated in big cities like New York and San Francisco.

As a candidate in 2016, Trump promised to revitalize those areas. In his first three years in office, before the pandemic hit, the national economy was strong. Unemployment was low. Wages were rising. But left-behind counties saw few of those benefits.

In 2018, a colleague and I noted that left-behind counties that voted for Trump had not seen any net job gains the previous year. The new Economic Innovation Group analysis shows that, in terms of job growth, left-behind counties experienced three of their four worst years since the Great Recession on Trump's watch.

The pandemic recession hit those counties harder than the rest of the country, just as the Great Recession did. But their recovery has been much stronger this time. Left-behind counties added jobs five times faster in the first three years of the Biden administration than they did in the first three years of the Trump administration. The flow of residents leaving them for better opportunities slowed.

Perhaps most strikingly, they have shared in a new-business boom that has swept the country since the pandemic. That didn't happen after the Great Recession. From 2009 to 2016, for example, Bay County, Mich., lost 8 percent of its business establishments. Since 2020, it has gained 12 percent. […]