Sprawl and its effects on the spatial distribution of jobs have been bad news for low-income workers in cities, especially for people of color. A mismatch has developed between the urban workforce and the kinds of jobs that are being created. According to a 1997 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report, 87 percent of the new jobs in the lower-paying and lower-skilled service sector and the retail sector that were created in the early 1990s were located in the suburbs. Low-skill workers living in cities often cannot access those new jobs because they do not own cars and cannot access the jobs through public transportation. What's worse, urban residents often cannot even find out about many of the low-skill job openings in the suburbs because recruitment for such jobs often happens through window signs and word of mouth, channels that are largely closed off to urban residents.

The flight of new jobs to the fringes leaves fewer employment opportunities in the urban core. Since mass transit systems were originally designed for jobs in the urban core and homes in bedroom communities in the suburbs, a dearth of good transportation options makes it difficult for urban residents to access jobs out in the suburbs. The result is that low-skill workers are trapped in the cities without access to many job opportunities.

Job Quality
As the jobs thin out, the quality of many often diminishes. Without a geographically dense labor market and the higher levels of unionization found in the urban core, companies in the suburbs seek to pay their employees lower wages and provide fewer benefits. At the same time, the movement of jobs to the suburbs can undermine the bargaining ability of urban workers, thus putting downward pressure on working conditions in cities as well. So in addition to creating transportation and housing barriers, by reducing unionization, sprawl perpetuates the cycle of poverty found in most American cities.

Aren't economic development subsidies supposed to encourage job creation in our cities?
When subsidies are publicized, politicians often tout the fact that luring the company to the area will produce lots of jobs for the city's local economy, especially among the unemployed. Subsidies are supposed to encourage job creation, but they seldom do. Just because a company receives a subsidy does not mean that it will actually produce the jobs that it may have previously promised or that new jobs won't go to workers recruited from outside the area.

Economic development subsidies should truly help the community that pays for them, but as the system works in most places, there is no way to ensure that they will. In fact, subsidies are often given to companies that contribute to sprawl by shifting jobs to outer-ring suburbs or rural areas. That's because geographically targeted subsidies such as enterprise zones and tax increment financing have become so deregulated in many states that they no longer steer jobs to needy areas. In result, economic development subsidies are contributing to the spatial mismatch between available jobs and the urban workforce. See the Subsidies and Sprawl section of the website for more details on how subsidies exacerbate the job flight that is already occurring.