Here's a reality based report that won't be discussed by the local viziers of boosterism in Phoenix, much less the editorial pages of the Arizona Republic. The job losses from the recession that began in 2007 are much worse in Arizona than the 10 previous major recessions since the end of World War II.
The Minneapolis Fed crunched data nationally and for 50 states to come up with this fascinating interactive presentation. Although Arizona's unemployment appears to be relatively low compared to some states — for reasons I've previously explored — this comprehensive report puts all the wishful thinking and ideological twisty games to bed. No other downturn comes even close. The "legendary" 1991 recession? Beanbag compared with this labor market bloodbath. The truly nasty 1973 recession? Not even close.
This has implications nobody in power in Arizona wants to contemplate.
The other post-war recessions were relatively mild compared to the nation, chiefly because Arizona, and especially Phoenix, kept adding population. This built and fueled the famous growth machine. Although the job market lacked diversity — never more so than now — a recession tended to mean a slowdown in the rate of growth, not a net loss.
Not now — for the first time since the 1973 downturn, Arizona is losing jobs and at a far deeper rate. This is uncharted territory, where all the state's weaknesses will aggravate the situation and make recovery more difficult. And all they can hope for is the revival of the growth machine at an even faster pace — a challenging proposition, to say the least.
It’s one thing to be pessmistic (I know I am) and it’s something else to remember the previous downturns and the economy Arizona had at those times. There is no comparison. During the last big real-estate bust, say 1989-1993, Motorola was still the state’s biggest employer. Honeywell was still very strong. Dial was a big corporate citizen. And there were movers and shakers like Jerry Colangelo and Richard Mallery still making things happen downtown.
Heady times, as it were, now mostly gone.
In retrospect, you could see the leakage in Arizona even during the go-go Clinton years. Power decentralized and dissipated to the fringes. Real estate and the growth machine took on disproportionate power. Politically, establishment Republicanism slowly declined as talk radio became the galvanizing force for the right. Arizona was changing dramatically, but it was the reaction to the change that controlled the political agenda.
There’s no road back to the old real-estate economy. We’ll probably be in a real-estate depression indefinitely. There will be no big initiatives or blue-ribbon panels mapping comeback strategies. Population growth will slow and possibly stagnate.
The weaknesses were always there but it was the easiness of the real-estate sector that made it so drug-like and hallucinatory. It made a lot of people rich, which made the arguments for its economic primacy in our lives. Point out the flaws in that strategy and you might end up exiled in Seattle.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or in this case, a terrible columnist.
Jon Talton’s power and clear-eyed realism made him a tremendous columnist, an advocate of the broad public interest. That, of course, made him inconvenient for the corporate idiots at Gannett, who have colonized the Valley and catered to the real estate interests that once lined up to buy the ads that flogged their construction Ponzi. Of course, the purpose of a colony is not to develop the well-being of its inhabitants. It is to serve the mother country, which in this case is Gannett’s home office, where the only value is the stock value, and where the stock value has been destroyed.