Metropolitan and Non-metropolitan Employment Trends in the US: Recent Evidence and Implications

Abstract
Employment trends are analysed for the period 1969-94 across metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas (disaggregated spatially) by region and by sector. The decentralisation story is persistent but complex. The 1980s turns out to be an aberration (and even in that period, suburban growth was stronger than central-city growth), because since 1988 the vigorous non-metropolitan growth of the 1970s has resumed, and now has a clear rural emphasis.