“A timely and smart discussion of how different cities and regions have made a changing economy work for them — and how policymakers can learn from that to lift the circumstances of working Americans everywhere."

---Barack Obama

“The New Geography of Jobs” is must reading for anyone trying to understand the state of America.

--- Paul Krugman, The New York Times

“Decade after decade, smart and educated people flock away from Merced, Calif., Yuma, Ariz., Flint, Mich., and Vineland, N.J. In those places, less than 15 percent of the residents have college degrees. They flock to Washington, Boston, San Jose, Raleigh-Durham and San Francisco. In those places, nearly 50 percent of the residents have college degrees. As Enrico Moretti writes in The New Geography of Jobs, the magnet places have positive ecologies that multiply innovation, creativity and wealth. The abandoned places have negative ecologies and fall further behind. This sorting is self-reinforcing, and it seems to grow more unforgiving every year.”

—David Brooks, The New York Times

“Enrico Moretti is a first-rate empirical researcher who has taught us much about the geographic impact of human capital and a variety of public investments. His book, The New Geography of Jobs, is well-written and filled with important facts and wise policy advice. […] Both local policymakers and national leaders interested in policies with a geographical edge would do well to read the book.”

—Edward Glaeser

“The New Geography of Jobs, examines how and why hiring is stronger in some U.S. cities than in others."

—PBS NewsHour

I have recently finished reading what may be the most important book of the decade on the contemporary economy. It is not Thomas Piketty’s controversial “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” or Robert Gordon’s magisterial “Rise and Fall of American Growth.” It is Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti’s short, lucid, nontechnical volume, “The New Geography of Jobs,” published in 2012. Mr. Moretti’s book offers a compelling and simple explanation of the most fundamental economic trend of our time—the widening split between dynamic urban areas on the one hand and struggling cities and small towns on the other.

---William Galston, The Wall Street Journal

“Moretti has written the most important book of the year, I can't recommend it enough. The Cal-Berkeley economic professor's book is extremely necessary for politicians and commentators alike, book that artfully slays myriad myths that cloud the economic debate. Brilliant.”

—Forbes

“Everyone should read "The New Geography of Jobs," by University of California-Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti. It's probably the most important popular economics book of the decade.”

--Noah Smith, Bloomberg View

“[A] persuasive look at why some U.S. cities have prospered in recent decades while others have declined.”
—Businessweek

“In a new book, The New Geography of Jobs, University of California at Berkeley economics professor Enrico Moretti argues that for each job in the software, technology and life-sciences industries, five new jobs are indirectly created in the local economy. The jobs range from yoga instructors to restaurant owners. Mr. Moretti calculated such a multiplier effect by examining U.S. Census Bureau data from eight million workers in 320 areas during the past 30 years. Mr. Moretti says the data support the argument that technology innovators are one of the most important engines of job creation in the U.S.—with three of those five jobs going to people without college degrees.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“Moretti has written a clear and insightful account of the economic forces that are shaping America and its regions, and he rightly celebrates human capital and innovation as the fundamental sources of economic development.”

—The New Republic

“Compelling”

—Slate

“Whatever this month unemployment report turns out to be, it's probably not going to be great news for the Rust Belt. Best guesses are manufacturing jobs are still scarce. Meanwhile, new economy places like Silicon Valley continue to thrive. The difference? Location, location, location. So says economist Enrico Moretti in his latest book, The New Geography of Jobs.”

—NPR MarketPlace

“A bold vision.”

—MIT Sloan Management Review

“It is a great and disturbing book about the sweeping changes that are going on in American communities.”

—Reuters

“Moretti’s book suggests that for each additional job in the average high-tech firm, five additional jobs are created outside that firm in the local community.”

—NPR All Things Considered

“Economist Enrico Moretti finds that earnings of a high school graduate increase 7% for every 10% increase in the percent of people in a city that are college graduates. While having more high-skilled workers around tends to raise everyone's salaries, Moretti's research shows that low-skilled workers benefit four to five times more than college graduates. Even as liberals work to find a way to counteract the problem of the 1 percent, they should view high skilled immigrants as a step toward turning America back into a true middle-class society.”

—The Atlantic

“Professor Moretti is a visionary scholar and one of the most important new voices in economics.”
—The Costa Report

“The book is an inviting read. It is dense with ideas, but spiced liberally with local detail”

—The Journal of Economic Geography

“[There is] a growing divide among American cities. The winners are metro areas like Raleigh, N.C., San Francisco, and Stamford C.T. where more than 40 percent of the adult residents have college degrees. […] Metro areas like Bakersfield, Calif., Lakeland, Fla., and Youngstown, Ohio, where less than a fifth of the adult residents have college degrees, are being left behind. The divide shows signs of widening as college graduates gravitate to places with many other college graduates and the atmosphere that creates. "This is one of the most important developments in the recent economic history of this country," said Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who recently published a book on the topic, The New Geography of Jobs”

—The New York Times

“The choice of where you live is the most important choice an American worker can make today.”
—The Dylan Ratigan Show, MSNBC

“A fresh, provocative analysis of the debate on education and employment. . . A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's more profound problems.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“If there's one current book I'd recommend to leaders in American cities today, it's Enrico Moretti's The New Geography of Jobs.”

—The Urbanophile

“Enrico Moretti’s, The New Geography of Jobs has been exceptionally well received by many of the economic development literati. Some commentators have described New Geography as the best economic development book of 2013. And if you don’t read New Geography, you would also miss reading the best, most readable explanation and defense of innovation, knowledge-based economics and their effects on the location of jobs in the United States. There is a lot going on in New Geography.”

—Journal of Applied Research in Economic Development

“An important new book.”

—The American

“Prof. Moretti's findings are both significant and provocative.”

—Institute for Research on Labor and Employment　

“The New Geography of Jobs is arguably the most important book about urban economics published this year. Author Enrico Moretti, an Italian-born economics professor at Berkeley, analyzes the great divergence occurring between metropolitan regions in the United States. While much of his narrative about the innovation sector as the key driver in regional growth will be familiar to readers of Richard Florida, Moretti provides a valuable counter-balance to Florida’s theories about the creative class.”

—Bacon's Rebellion

“The book is excellent, I strongly recommend it.”

— Adam Ozimek , Forbes

“Enrico Moretti's superb book highlights why the study of economic geography is vital for understanding fundamental issues such as the root causes of rising income inequality, innovation, and job growth. For those who are curious about how the United States will continue to thrive in the global 21st century economy, I can think of no better book to read than The New Geography of Jobs.”

—Matthew E. Kahn, author of Climatopolis

“Moretti's book is well-written, well-argued, and important. The New Geography of Jobs is the sort of economics that should be widely read, digested, and discussed.”

—The Digital Quad

“The message of his very well written and prize winning book is important. And Enrico is right that we should pay attention to the geography of where smart people are choosing to work, play, and live their lives. Ultimately, it has consequences for all of us.”

—The Creativity Post

The attractive power of skilled cities has become the signal fact of American economic geography. It is this new map that University of California, Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti describes in detail in his book “The New Geography of Jobs”. Moretti provides a sweeping summary of the new stylized facts of metropolitan growth. […] The book is an inviting read. It is dense with ideas, but spiced liberally with local detail.

---Journal of Economic Geography

“If you’re thinking of a career change or new employment, or if job creation is your Number One priority this year, this is a book you’ll want first. You’ll need solid, hard-core information to do it. And for that, The New Geography of Jobs is hard to resist.”

—Independent News

“Enrico Moretti has written an important book that every student of local economic development should read. His perspective is dynamic, placing the present situation in the context of the evolution of industrial production and labor markets over the past 50 year.”

—Berkeley Planning Journal

“Wow. . . Without referring to Charles Murray, Moretti blows Coming Apart totally out of the water, replacing Murray's moralistic sociology with solid economics.”

—EconLog

“We are habituated to thinking about U.S. inequality across people: By education, race, and ethnicity. Moretti convincingly demonstrates that the inequalities that matter most in early 21st century America are the differences across places. An individual standard of living is increasingly determined by where she lives, not just what she does. Wages are higher, and unemployment lower, for workers living in an "innovation cluster" than for comparably educated workers outside of these privileged places.”

—Inside Higher Ed

“Moretti has done a good deed by sitting down to write. He's clear and concise. He has writer's knack for pulling out the illustrative detail while never losing the broad sweep of events. It is truly a skill to be equally at home in the abstract realm of statistics and the very emotion-laden world of human decision-making. Most economists forget that the conclusions they draw from their sample populations also contain the drama of people's actual lives within them. Moretti remembers this while avoiding another trap of economists. He doesn't leave his story in the realm of the theoretical, but constantly brings his tale back to real-world existence in a way that amplifies the argument by making it coincide with everyday experience. Most importantly, he knows his subject well and he's talking about something that is shaping our future more than we realize.”

—Sam Seidel

“In The New Geography of Jobs, Moretti explains how innovative industries bring 'good jobs' and high salaries to the communities where they cluster, and their impact on the local economy is much deeper than their direct effect.”

—Buffalo Rising