Quote:
Originally Posted by PhillyPDX
Seattle has an extremely diverse economy, hence why it is so strong, if that's what you mean.
Actually last week I posted how Portland had the largest job loss in the country last year, and someone here posted it's because a few companies cut workers and those had a big impact on jobs here leading to a net decrease. If true, that's the definition of a local economy lacking diversification. A city this size shouldn't be so dependent on just a few large firms.
Ultimately I bet you would find that overall, people follow jobs and not the other way around. To that end it's all about the economy and jobs. Affordable housing is just a secondary part of that equation. People flock to Texas because of jobs AND affordability. And it's why they don't flock to cheaper Louisiana immediately adjacent. Housing is secondary.
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Seattle's economy is strong, but it's not
really that diverse. There's Amazon and Microsoft--two tech companies--and Boeing, which...these days, I hardly need say more. At this point, all three are very nearly too big to fail, and there's unarguably a strong set of SMEs that, while dependent on the Seattle "Big Three", would still survive if they didn't, but I can't foresee the city doing too well if, for whatever reason, all three took a major downturn.
As for Portland's situation, I think it's probably the case that the city's economy, as a whole, just isn't that big. It's obviously dominant in the region, but not in the same way that, e.g., Seattle is over Tacoma, or Boston over Providence, NYC over Jersey City, etc. At the same time, there's arguably not a "second city" to Metro Portland, besides maybe Vancouver, which is not strong enough to stand on its own (unlike, comparing those last three examples, Tacoma [with its port facilities and JBLM], Providence [which could tie itself t NYC], or Jersey City [which is a secondary financial hub and port to the NYC metro area]). If Portland were to make a major downturn, I'm not sure where else could realistically pick up the slack.
The relationship between jobs and population is bi-directional, especially in service economies. To say it's about "the economy and jobs" is not really understanding that you can't have them without demand for the goods/services they produce. It's true, housing is secondary--that's why you can find, now and in the present, examples of places where housing is extraordinarily expensive for the average resident yet the region remains economically vibrant; e.g., NYC at the turn of the 20th century or Mumbai now.
Just the same, one of the U.S.' major sources of economic resiliency has always been the mobility of our workforce. In the longer-run history of the country, people have absolutely gone from one place to another for cheaper housing, albeit usually other factors are also involved. Once A/C became widespread, there was nothing stopping a raft of service/manufacturing industries fleeing the expensive (and cold) northeast/midwest for cheaper labor in the south/southwest. That's in part a product of cheaper housing; if your employees can't afford housing off of the jobs you pay them to do, where your jobs for them are, they won't work for you. It works out on a national basis, but that doesn't mean there aren't any regional losers in the process. The failure of the northeast to build enough housing to accommodate the workers who produced/provided the goods/services the northeast, itself, demanded, was a success for a lot of other parts of the country.
There's no reason to think high housing costs don't have negative economic effects, especially since that kind of wealth accrual doesn't usually translate to higher levels of consumer/business spending, which is what keeps an economy going. The housing crisis of the past ~2 decades or so isn't just called a crisis for drama's sake. There are genuine negative consequences to not building enough housing for your workforce; they'll catch up with us, sooner or later.
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