Recession Recovery: Cities that Have Improved the Most

The Great Recession began in December 2007 when the U.S. housing market was hit hard by subprime mortgage losses. The fallout led to a decline in consumer spending and business investment, which was followed by massive job losses — in 2008 and 2009, the U.S. workforce lost at least 8.7 million jobs.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession officially ended in June 2009. While some sectors of the economy are still struggling, many cities across the U.S. have seen signs of recovery in economic indicators such as the labor market and home values.

With this month marking the five-year anniversary of the official end of the recession, NerdWallet crunched the numbers to find the cities that have improved the most. We considered the following factors in our analysis of 510 of the largest U.S. cities:

1.    Labor market: To assess improvement in a city’s labor market, we measured the percentage change in unemployment in the civilian labor force from 2009 to 2012. We also calculated the change in median household income.

2.    Housing market: We calculated the change in median home value from 2009-2012.

Some notable findings include:

• Eight out of the top 10 cities on our list are in Texas, a state that has seen tremendous economic growth in the past few years.
• The largest place among the 50 most improved cities was Washington, D.C.
• Florida had eight cities in the bottom 20 of our list of 510 places—the most of any state among the “least improved” cities.
• The largest city among the least improved cities was Detroit, Michigan, which placed 509^th out of 510.

Top 40 Most Improved Cities Since the Recession

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