DN Editorial: Is city working?

FOR DECADES, Philadelphia has fought against a downward spiral of lost jobs and an eroding population, so we're tempted to say recent good-news/bad-news reports on the city's growth could be considered pretty darn good, relatively speaking.

For example, the Nutter administration announced this week that the unemployment rate declined to 9.5 percent in November, the lowest since May 2009.

And the Census Bureau reported recently that the number of people living in poverty declined last year, though it's still 26 percent of the city's population.

A new report from the Center City District underscores the good news. The Eds and Meds sector of the city's economy continues to grow. We are attracting more young people who want to live and work here. The city's population continues to grow.

The gloom that accompanied talk about the fate of America's big cities for years seems to have lifted. As the Center City report puts it: "Decline is no longer the inevitable fate of older cities."

In many ways, Philadelphia is poised to share in the urban revival. Still, it's not all rosy, especially for the long term. The CCD report points out that we don't compare favorably to nearby cities when it comes to the crucial element of job creation.

The unemployment rate today in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York and Baltimore is lower than it is here.

Boston, New York and Washington have managed to create jobs, especially since 2000, while Philadelphia lags behind. We've seen a slight uptick in employment postrecession, but it is only a few clicks higher. Are we looking at a genuine revival of Philadelphia as a workplace? Or are we "just bouncing along the bottom," as the CCD report puts it?

Take Greater Center City - home to 44 percent of all the jobs in the city.

Many of them are high-paying jobs that attract skilled workers, many of them from the suburbs, but 30 percent are held by workers with high-school diplomas or less and another 30 percent by workers with some college or an associate degree.

Unfortunately, job growth is stagnant in Center City, with employment in law and financial services declining steadily.

This city doesn't have the luxury of spinning its wheels when it comes to job creation. We need more work and we need it now.

The collapse of manufacturing is usually cited at the reason why Philadelphia hurts so much on the jobs front. But, it's time to get past using that as an excuse. It happened decades ago. Besides, other cities suffered similar losses and managed to rebound.

Paul Levy, head of the Center City District, believes it is our tax structure that holds us back, with its heavy reliance on wage and business taxes. Levy's mantra is: Better to tax the things that cannot move (real property) than things that can (workers and businesses). His view does not have widespread political support among politicians who are happy with the status quo.

But the momentum the city has managed to build in the past few years proves not only that we can break out of the past, but that steps like real tax reform are worth tackling. The city's upward momentum would be a terrible thing to waste.