Characterizing the Regional Structure in the United States: A County-based Analysis of Labor Market Centrality

Nikhil Kaza and Katherine Nesse

International Regional Science Review, 2021, vol. 44, issue 5, 560-581

Abstract: Categorizing places based on their network connections to other places in the region reveals not only population concentration but also economic dynamics that are missed in other typologies. The US Office of Management and Budget categorization of counties into metropolitan/micropolitan and central/outlying is widely seen as insufficient for many analytic purposes. In this article, we use a coreness index from network analysis to identify labor market centrality of a county. We use county-to-county commute flows, including internal commuting, to identify regional hierarchies. Indicators broken down by this typology reveal counterintuitive results in many cases. Not all strong core counties have large populations or high levels of urbanization. Employment in these strong core counties grew faster in the postrecession (2008–2015) than in other types of counties. This economic dimension is missed by other typologies, suggesting that our categorization may be useful for regional analysis and policy.

Keywords: urban and regional economic development; economic growth and development; policy and applications; urban and regional spatial structure; spatial structure; network analysis; spatial analysis; methods; labor force; human resources; population and employment distribution; human spatial structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:inrsre:v:44:y:2021:i:5:p:560-581

DOI: 10.1177/0160017620946082

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