Metropolitan employment growth and neighborhood job access in spatial and skills perspectives - Empirical evidence from seven Ohio metropolitan regions

The spatial mismatch hypothesis is representative research concerning the i ntrametropolitan spatial distribution of employment growth and its impact o n central-city-confine low-skilled workers. The authors examine the determi nants of neighborhood job access and intrametropolitan differences in five industry cohorts, classified by average earnings of workers. They further c ompare change of job access between 1990 and 1996 across intrametropolitan spatial divisions. Empirical evidence in support of the spatial mismatch hy pothesis is found only in the central county context: labor-force-weighted low-wage job access in central-city neighborhoods was, on average, lower th an in inner-suburban neighborhoods but greater than in outer-suburban neigh borhoods.