Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.>> Despite our urban problems, it's good to be reminded that the Omaha area continues to recover from the Great Recession better than many areas — with the lowest unemployment rate here among the nation's 100 largest metros.
Kansas City, Mo., with its culture, fountains, shopping and sports, remains a favorite place to visit for lots of people in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. But the Kansas City Star reported over the weekend that the KC area isn't recovering as fast as most of its peer cities or as fast as the nation as a whole.
“We are falling behind our peers,” economist Frank Lenk said at an economic forecast breakfast. The Star reported that “Lenk's analysis found that Omaha, for example, has added jobs at a substantially better pace than Kansas City.”
The Omaha area's official unemployment rate was 5.1 percent in March, compared with 8.9 percent in Kansas City, Mo. The Brookings Institution's latest Metro Monitor report, based on December figures, still lists Omaha as lowest of the 100 largest metro areas, ahead of Honolulu and Madison, Wis.
Of the 372 metro areas that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counts, Lincoln — home of Nebraska state government and of the state's flagship university — was the lowest at 4.1 percent. At 5.1 percent, Omaha-Council Bluffs was tied for ninth in the overall metro ranking.
>> David Brown, president of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, has entered the Omaha area into competition for a $1 million award: the Talent Dividend Prize.
An organization called CEOs for Cities will award a million bucks to the metro area among the nation's 50 largest that posts the greatest increase in the number of post-secondary degrees over a four-year period. The money would be used for a national promotional campaign.
Omaha's current rate is 31 percent of adults, based on the 2007-09 American Community Survey. The national median is said to be 29.4 percent to 30.4 percent.
A spokeswoman for CEOs for Cities said that if the Omaha area increased its “college attainment rate” by one percentage point, it would be worth $600 million in additional personal income each year.
Brown said the chamber has a good collaboration with educators, and a steering committee will be formed with a goal of increasing the number of residents with degrees.
The metro area already is doing well, he said, mentioning ratings last year that Omaha is the most affordable large city in America and the second-best in which to do business.
>> An economic negative for the City of Omaha came in March when the U.S. Census Bureau reported a population count of 408,958 — far under the bureau's own 2009 estimate of 454,731.
Gary Hall, manager of long-range planning for the Omaha City Planning Department, said he was dumbfounded when the figures were published.
It turns out that the bureau was far off the mark in its estimates for lots of cities. Atlanta's census count was about 420,000, compared with a 2009 Census Bureau estimate of 541,000.
“How do 121,000 people disappear into thin air?” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked.
The bureau was off by 22 percent, which the Atlanta paper said was the worst discrepancy in the nation. Detroit's estimate was off by a similar percentage. For Omaha, the Census Bureau demographers were off by 10 percent.
Hall remains perplexed, but says the differences between estimates and actual counts elsewhere add perspective. “It makes our census-count dilemma less significant.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1132, michael.kelly@owh.com
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