Inquirer Editorial: Jobs landscape calls for reform

A report on private-sector jobs in the region finds that Philadelphians are fleeing the city at an alarming rate. Fortunately, they come back every night - for now.

The daily out-migration of nearly 191,000 people to jobs in the suburbs and New Jersey outlined in the new Center City District (CCD) review is a stark reminder that there simply aren't nearly enough jobs in the city.

Indeed, the decades-long downward trend in the private-sector workforce that provides 84 percent of city jobs shows no sign of leveling off. Another double-digit decline is possible by 2020, the business-funded group notes in its report released Thursday.

For all the progress in making the city a vibrant place with a booming downtown full of younger residents, the jobs trend threatens the city's ability to sustain critical public services, as well as invest in amenities like parks and cultural attractions that draw residents and visitors. As the report notes, "The city cannot sustain its needed services by raising taxes on a shrinking job base."

While reverse commuters - the bulk of them living in the city's Northeast - still support services through their wage-tax payments, the risk being borne out in U.S. Census figures is that more and more of them will follow their jobs and move their families outside the city.

The report suggests a two-pronged strategy that could lead the city back from the brink. First, it must bolster the core jobs centers in Center City and University City. Second, city elected, business, and civic leaders need to get behind a long-overdue campaign to change a tax mix that - apart from imposing an onerously high burden - leans too heavily on wages and profits, giving businesses a ready incentive to locate beyond the city's borders.

Easier to achieve the first part of that strategy, certainly. But it's even more important, perhaps, to attempt the second.

With the CCD's first-ever analysis of where city jobs are located - right down to each City Council district - the perennial downtown vs. the neighborhoods debate should be history.

In short, the city's core is where it's happening - with numbers showing that half of all private-sector jobs live there. And these jobs also attract nearly 90,000 suburban commuters who buttress city coffers with their taxes. So it's critical to sustain a quarter-century of important investments in making Center City cleaner and safer, as well as exciting enhancements being planned at the West Philadelphia campuses of Penn and Drexel.

Tax reform, shifting from wage and business levies that have crippled job growth, must come next. That will take political courage - so far, lacking - to rightsize city spending and modernize the city's tax structure. Without it, though, the jobs just won't be there.