A recent Brookings article by Rebecca Wilder, Brookings on regional economic performance, offers people the ability to track the recession and recovery (likely a year after the recession ends) across America's 100 largest metropolitan areas using the MetroMonitor. Here are some of their findings to date:
A few metropolitan areas are beginning to showing signs of economic recovery, although none has completely recovered. McAllen is the only metropolitan area that saw growth in both employment and output during the first quarter of 2009. Employment also rose in New Haven and Baton Rouge, while output also increased in Seattle, Austin, Virginia Beach, Washington, Richmond, San Jose, and Riverside. Still, none of these metro areas has yet returned to its pre-recession levels of employment or output.
The article continues to discuss distinct "belts" across the country and concentrations of different industries.