Housing related job cuts

The International Times Herald attributes the loss of 100,000 jobs in the United States last year to the slowdown in the housing market, including 24,000 by homebuilders alone in the last three months. Furniture makers, who cut 28,000 jobs in 2006, and other businesses, trades and service providers that support homebuilders are generally struggling. The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University (Graduate School of Design + Kennedy School of Gov't) claims that "housing and related industries account for about 23 percent of the economy" and expects housing-related unemployment to rise this year. Whirlpool, for example, is expected to cut jobs this year. The IHT article also cites NAR:

New-home sales probably will decline to an annualized pace of 944,000 in the third quarter and then rise to 959,000 in the last quarter, the National Association of Realtors said Feb. 7. Sales of previously owned homes bottomed in the fourth quarter at an annualized 6.24 million and will rise through at least the second half of 2008.

And the US Dept. of Commerce:

Builders broke ground in January on the smallest number of new homes since August 1997 as the industry struggled to unload the record 542,000 unsold properties from last year, the Commerce Department said in a report Friday. In the past three months of 2006, housing starts fell 24 percent from a year earlier.

These last figures are certainly encouraging, suggesting that there's plenty of sobriety among homebuilders in today's tough market.

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OK, if you know anything about the DFW metroplex, you're well aware that Big D and Cowtown despise one another. The former is supposedly where the East ends, while the latter is where the West begins. LA is to Dallas as ... well, there's no equivalent for Fort Worth. It's compact enough, at least for now, to maintain a "small town" feel, yet it has first-rate cultural offerings, thanks in large parts to pre-eminent Ft. Worth families like the Basses. It's more laid back than Dallas, and arguably more friendly and more Texan.

An article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram laments the Dallas-ification of Ft. Worth, covering the shuttering of a venerable Ft. Worth watering hole called the Wreck Room.

I suppose change is afoot, but it is a shame that venues with local character and a loyal following get elbowed out. Because of escalating land values, more residents preferring denser city living and cities encouraging mixed-use, retail/residential "urban village" concepts, it was perhaps inevitable that these types of developments would pop up near the city's core. Advocates for this transformation say it's less about the city becoming a knockoff of Dallas than it is about offering an expanded range of living, entertainment and dining alternatives for a growing and increasingly sophisticated population.

An open question: if the places (shops, restaurants, public spaces, etc.) change, will the people change with them? What's the "push" and what's the "pull"?