There are 169 counties in the Fourth District, and 68 of these counties are located within the District’s 16 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). An MSA is an area with a large population core, combined with adjacent communities that have a high degree of social and economic integration with that core.

Not surprisingly, the District's four most populous metropolitan areas also include the District's four most populous cities. Interestingly, while the Columbus MSA is the third most populous metropolitan area in the District, Columbus itself is the District's most populous city, with over three-quarters of a million people. The only large cities that grew much in the last decade were Columbus and Lexington. They were the only cities in the District with more than 100,000 people to show significant population growth from 2000 to 2010.

Average annual increases in population since 1970 have also been consistently higher for the United States than for the District. Annual population growth has averaged about 1.1 percent for the United States over this period, whereas annual increases in the District have averaged 0.1 percent.

Nominal personal incomes in the District have also tended to grow more slowly than in the United States as a whole. Since 1970, aggregate nominal income growth in the District has averaged approximately 6 percent annually; by contrast, nominal income in the United States rose roughly 7 percent through the same period. The result has been an increase in income of about 9.5 times for the District since 1970 versus an increase of about 15 times for the nation.

Health care has now surpassed manufacturing has the largest employing industry within our District. Districtwide, those employed in the health-care industry make up about 16 percent of the workforce, whereas the comparable figure for the country is about 15 percent. The share of employment the District devotes to manufacturing (about 13 percent) is still greater than the attendant shares for the United States (roughly 11 percent).

With combined assets totaling more than $500 billion, four of the nation's largest 50 bank holding company headquarters are located within the District.

Source: Call Reports

Kyle Fee and Nelson Oliver

As of September 2012, the unemployment rate for the Fourth District stood at 7.1 percent, having declined gradually throughout the year. Since this time last year, the rate has fallen 1.4 percent, and since the end of the recession in June of 2009, it has fallen 2.7 percent. Compared to the national unemployment rate, the District’s has tended to be slightly higher, but it now rests below the national rate of 7.8 percent.

County-level unemployment rates across the Fourth District ranged from a low of 4.2 percent in Mercer County, Ohio, to a high of 16.2 percent in Magoffin County, Kentucky. Since the end of the second quarter, the median unemployment rate has fallen 0.2 percent (from 7.3 percent to 7.1 percent). Despite a notable decline in the Fourth District’s overall unemployment rate, 30.7 percent of the counties in the District (52 of 169) have seen their unemployment rates increase over the past three months.

County-level patterns often reflect statewide unemployment rates. For example, as of September 2012, the unemployment rate for Ohio was 7.1 percent, for Pennsylvania 8.2 percent, Kentucky 8.4 percent, and West Virginia 7.6 percent. Annual changes in the states’ unemployment rates ranged from a 0.2 percent increase in Pennsylvania to a 1.5 percent decline in Ohio. Of the 169 counties that make up the District, 86 (50.8 percent) have an unemployment rate at or below the national level. Conversely, 19.5 percent of the District’s counties have a double-digit unemployment rate. This percentage is a strong improvement from the 41.4 percent recorded this time last year and an even more dramatic improvement from the peak of over 77 percent in October 2009. Geographically, unemployment remains the highest in remote areas of Ohio and Kentucky, while rural Pennsylvania has maintained a stronger labor market.

By many measures employment growth has been much slower than anticipated. On the national level, the size of the civilian labor force—those employed or looking for work—has exceeded pre-recession levels, but the Fourth District still struggles to make significant gains to its labor force. The total number of individuals actually employed has yet to reach pre-recession levels, though employment growth for the District and the nation has been nearly identical.