By Christopher Briem, on May 1st, 2012
So if you read this headline today: Pittsburgh leads nation in foreclosures in early part of 2012
Relax a bit.
If you get past the headline you will note that it is talking about how Pittsburgh had the biggest percentage increase in foreclosures. Biggest quarterly percentage increase more precisely.
If you read the actual press release RealtyTrac put out you will learn a few interesting things. Even with Pittsburgh topping the percentage increase, it still does not come close to cracking the top 20 regions in terms of the actual foreclosure rate. That must say something about how low foreclosures here were before that even after such a big jump we are not ranked high afterwards.
Also.. and more importantly, the weird factoid on Pittsburgh’s increase was a quarterly jump and as pointed out in both the article and press release there were some anomalous things going on in the numbers resulting from the robosigning. Also note the press releases other big observation:
Despite the quarterly increase in more than half of the metro areas tracked in the report, first quarter foreclosure activity was still down compared to the first quarter of 2011 in 135 out of the 212 metro areas (64 percent).
Now go back and read the headline. 
By Christopher Briem, on April 30th, 2012
So… I just don’t have it in me to go though the history of all of this. But if you recall the miasmic variable rate bond the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority had out there and thought maybe it was all resolved merely because it has not been in the news of late… well…
No… it all is hanging out there evermore. See this PR just fired out there late on a Friday afternoon (the time period you use to send PRs to die): Fitch Rates $72.75MM Pittsburgh (PA) Water & Sewer Auth Bonds, Series B-1 of 2008 ‘A/F1′. They were contracted to do the rating, which suggests to me a new debt offering is out there.
Note… “seventh supplemental bond indenture”…. but who is counting any longer? Been a long time since the variable rate basis of the PWSA bonds was even noticed. I still want someone to audit those bonds just to come up with a number for how much of the debt went toward anything remotely defined as capital investment.. and how much just went into financial machinations to pay itself off. If not an audit, there has to be a case study for someone to deconstruct. For a public finance handbook.
and completely random stream of consciousness…. but don’t you think they could use the potassium permanganate to find some of the leaks in the system. Probably not the best idea I guess, but I bet it would work. Crowdsource finding the purple throughout the city… iPurple?
By Christopher Briem, on April 27th, 2012
One of the owners of the Rivers Casino says the business is a terrible investment. Just terrible. In context you can’t ignore that the statement is made as part of litigation to lower the property’s assessed value for tax purposes.
So here is the deal. Maybe he is right, maybe he isn’t. The Rivers Casino could be an awful investment or a great one. What is a bit clearer is that the value of the casino has only gone up since he invested in the business. When Don Barden and his coinvestors were supplanted as the equity owners of the casino there still were not table games in PA casinos. No assurance there was going to be table games in the future. Table games have been very very lucrative for Pennsylvania casinos. Not only do tables games incur a lower tax rate on gross revenues but they bring more people through the door which has been pushing up slots revenues as well. Add in the deteriorating economy at the time and other reasons to think that the price paid at the time was actually pushed down from what it might have been a year earlier or a year later. One way or another the value of the casino has gone up since that investment was made.
Consider that if it was a bad investment, the new owners were clearly warned of that fact by just how well all the previous investors fared. The ‘bad’ part of the investment was not hidden and assuming the investors were not unsophisticated they took all the available information into account when deciding what price to pay.
Remember it was not just the late Don Barden who took a bath, but his co-investors and even the folks who backed the loans he took out. That would include the Detroit public pension system.. someone may need to check to see what the outcome was of that story. The point is that the casino was probably worth what it was paid by the new owners at the time they made the investment.. and the whole enterprise can only have increased in value since.
Recall Don Barden’s financing scheme for the casino early on…..
By Christopher Briem, on April 26th, 2012
What is really fascinating is that a potential new major reorganization at USAirways just barely makes it into the news cycle here any longer. Maybe that makes sense given the number of flights left here, but I bet there would be ramifications no matter. It is also a real change from the past when, as with US Steel before it, every little machination at USAirways would make news all around here. As for the future??? Charlotte is still one of the top destinations of passengers departing PIT and I have to believe that a lot of that is related to the USAirways hub they have retained for now.
Via my Pittsburgh Airport Data link on the right is this data on flights at PIT by carrier:
By Christopher Briem, on April 25th, 2012
So not so much new in the latest data dump on jobs for the region. Job count is up year over year again, and about average what you would expect month over month between Feb and March. I had thought the mild weather would have pushed up some of the mid-winter employment which could have made the seasonal increases at the end of winter appear smaller. So not yet, but maybe that will show up next month. Total jobs are the 2nd highest for a March other than the peak period in early 2001 discussed previously. So I will go on a limb and say that July 2012 will be the all-time peak in the job counts for the Pittsburgh region. You can hold me to that when we get that data.
So what might be interesting? Again looking at sequential March data only, some solid jumps in the employment in local “Leisure and Hospitality industries”. Looks like this.. again just plotting March of each year:
So the local hotels are happy I am sure. It is interesting in that in the past you would sometimes see this factoid of high ‘tourism’ related employment in the region. It was true, but it was also reflecting the impact of the USAirways hub across a number of industries which would typically be thrown into that metric. So it was not quite the same ‘tourism’ impact in that it was not necessarily folks coming to visit Pittsburgh itself. Yet now the hub is kaput and the ‘travel and leisure’ job counts are pretty solidly going up. So there you go.
By Christopher Briem, on April 20th, 2012
Just reading about the region’s most anticipated new resident… What is more interesting are some news stories popping up of the folks who were not selected.
Not really connected… but in general where do people moving into Pittsburgh come from? From something we put out late last year is this map:
By Christopher Briem, on April 18th, 2012
So here is a riddle. Population in the region is ticking up for the first time in decades. Net migration is actually net positive for at least 3+ years now which has little precedent here in almost a century. We know we have one of the oldest housing stocks in the nation and minimal new construction in recent years. So where are the new folks living? If you look at the numbers not only is there no big uptick in housing supply on the horizon, but it looks like the rate of new housing units coming online here is lower than in parts of the 1980s. So says the data on the number of building permits issued monthly:
 The answer in part lies in the more interesting factoid to come out of the recent migration data. Allegheny County showed net positive migration for the first time in many decades. It was not a big net migration number, but the point is that it was not a big negative number which had been the pattern going back longer than it matters to count. Back in the 1980s the region was seeing tens of thousands more leaving than coming each year, yet there was still new construction. Why? Because there was still a big flow out of the urban core and into suburban municipalities, many of which were building out rapidly despite the overall regional malaise.
So there is a certain Zen to how all the numbers work out (isn’t there always?). Now the population decline is at least temporarily abated, but with Allegheny County holding it’s own the big source of housing construction in the suburbs is diminished. Plenty of places in the region’s traditional centers that could accommodate a lot of new residents without a lot of new construction. Probably a lot of investment needed in existing housing along the way.
By Christopher Briem, on April 17th, 2012
Harvard and Manhattan Institute scholar Ed Glaeser is going to be in town today speaking at Pitt. Professor Glaeser is one of a very few wont to quote the late Ben Chinitz who was at chairman of the Economics Department here in the 1970s I believe. Chinitz along with Edgar Hoover were pretty much the folks behind the 4 volume Economic Study of the Pittsburgh region that was completed in the early 1960’s and remains a personal Rosetta Stone for much of my work.
Glaeser’s latest book The Triumph of the City has been in the news. On the book the Trib quoted him in an article last year.. the whole story is worth reading, but note this one quote:
“(T)he reason why … I would argue that Pittsburgh is successful is that it has smart people. … (A) third of Pittsburgh residents above the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree, as opposed to 27.5 percent for the U.S. average — that’s very different than Detroit. Detroit’s at 11 percent. … That’s absolutely crucial to Pittsburgh’s success.”
Sort of connects everything in the news of late doesn’t it? If anything Professor Glaeser understates the emergent Pittsburgh exceptionalism (as contrasts to past Pittsburgh exceptionalisms). Note again that when you benchmark educational attainment for the entire population 25 and over you kind of are missing the Pittsburgh story. As we all know we have a skewed older demographic and the older generations did not go to school as much as younger generations do today. So when you look at specific age cohorts, and specifically younger working age cohorts the educational attainment of Pittsburgh jumps off the chart. Then consider that younger college educated workers are the most mobile parts of the population you will see why migration has turned positive of late for Pittsburgh more than for any other reason. It really does all tie together as much as many try to deny it.
By Christopher Briem, on April 16th, 2012
Just reading the Sunday paper(s)………
PG is focusing on veterans in the SW Pennsylvania in a set of articles today: Weak economy, lack of opportunities have returning vets fighting for jobs. A different angle, but last year some colleagues looked at: The Impact of Veterans Returning to the Pittsburgh Region. I myself am amazed at how much the world has changed since I wrote this old piece.
Trib is running a WashPo story that looks at demographic issues impacting the labor force nationally: Diminishing work force bad sign for economy. I just looked at the past, present and future of demographic changes impacting just the Pittsburgh region’s labor force in: Projecting the Impact of Demographic Change in Pittsburgh’s Labor Force.
PG looks at what is in a sense a perpetual story: Heard Off the Street: Manufacturing jobs await skilled workers. Which if you want to dig into more there was an interesting piece on the PBS newshour recently that I was going to post on and then forgot. The piece was laudably in depth, yet in the end incredibly conflicted piece on the state of the national labor force and this particular theme of how hard it is for manufacturers to find workers. Suffice it to say it’s not a simple issue. The piece is also based in an Ohio town not far away: Galion, Ohio, which is outside the heart of Cleveburgh, but not too too far away. It gets to this great confusion that is not new in any way. Jobs out there going unfilled all while lots of folks unable to get to work. I’ll embed the video below.
By Christopher Briem, on April 13th, 2012
So I typed this up and discovered at the end something else of wonkish note. Calculating the Pittsburgh region’s unemployment rate is a bit less clear than I thought.. and I already thought we overinterpret these monthly data dumps for a host of reasons. So the state Department of Labor reported that the Pittsburgh region’s unemployment rate, when seasonally adjusted, came in at 6.7% for February (and my division of their numbers gets you to the ominous 6.66%) OK. That is what we all normally look at and the number the media reports on. Just recently the US Bureau of Labor Statistics started reporting its own seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for the Pittsburgh region. In the past BLS reported the unadjusted unemployment rates for most MSAs but only seasonally adjusted rates for a subset of regions which didn’t include Pittsburgh in recent years. Last year they started reporting their own seasonally adjusted rates for most MSAs. The BLS calculation of the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Pittsburgh in February is 6.8%
Which to use? For the comparison across MSAs I’ll stick with the BLS calculation for the moment.
So how (relatively) low is the region’s unemployment rate? The top 40 labor markets are in the graph below. The 5 places with lower unemployment rates include 2 regions with sizable presence of government jobs (Washington and Virginia Beach)… government jobs which Pittsburgh lacks.. and two regions which may top us in the proportion of higher education related employment (Boston and Austin). Leaves only Minneapolis. Their low unemployment rate must be because of all the bikes.
Yes, of course… the ‘relative’ unemployment rate is not really relevant to anyone individually. In reality unemployment is either zero or 100% depending on your personal circumstances. Still, how high is the region’s unemployment rate? Since 1970, the region’s average unemployment rate works out to be a bit over 6.6%. The nation’s average unemployment rate works out to 6.4%. So we have a bit to go to reach those levels… but at (6.7 or 6.8) it is not a big jump.
|
|
Most Popular Posts