As poor and minority residents shifted toward suburbs in the 2000s, their proximity to jobs fell more than for non-poor and white residents. The number of jobs near the typical Hispanic (-17 percent) and black (-14 percent) resident in major metro areas declined much more steeply than for white (-6 percent) residents, a pattern repeated for the typical poor (-17 percent) versus non-poor (-6 percent) resident.
Residents of high-poverty and majority-minority neighborhoods experienced particularly pronounced declines in job proximity. Overall, 61 percent of high-poverty tracts (with poverty rates above 20 percent) and 55 percent of majority-minority neighborhoods experienced declines in job proximity between 2000 and 2012. A growing number of these tracts are in suburbs, where nearby jobs for the residents of these neighborhoods dropped at a much faster pace than for the typical suburban resident (17 and 16 percent, respectively, versus 7 percent).
For local and regional leaders working to grow their economies in ways that promote opportunity and upward mobility for all residents, these findings underscore the importance of understanding how regional economic and demographic trends intersect at the local level to shape access to employment opportunities, particularly for disadvantaged populations and neighborhoods. And they point to the need for more integrated and collaborative regional strategies around economic development, housing, transportation, and workforce decisions that take job proximity into account.
Neighborhood trends in the number of nearby jobs
For each census tract, find the number of jobs located nearby (i.e. within a typical commute distance for the metro area). Use the “Map options” menu to select which year of data to view, and to identify high-poverty or majority-minority neighborhoods. More information »
How do the neighborhoods in the map above compare to the metro area average?
Number of jobs near the average resident of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV metro area
|Entire metro area||City portion of the metro area||Suburban portion of the metro area|
|Neighborhood type||2000||2012||Change (%)||2000||2012||Change (%)||2000||2012||Change (%)|
For each metropolitan area, see how the number of jobs near the average resident compares with other large metro areas and the nation as a whole. Hover over each bar for detailed information.