Report finds Philadelphians are unemployed but optimistic

According to a recent report by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphians are more optimistic than the rest of the country - even though they consume a record high of cigarettes and have dismal job prospects.

At a time when only 20 percent of the U.S. population say the country is headed in the right direction, 46 percent of Philadelphians look forward to the city's future.

The Philadelphia Research Initiative, funded by Pew, recently released "Philadelphia 2009: The State of the City."

The authors, former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Tom Ferrick and PRI project director and former Inquirer reporter Larry Eichel, assembled the material for the report over four months. According to Eichel, they focused on six areas - jobs and the economy, crime and punishment, education, city government, arts and culture, and health and welfare.

The report found that unemployment has significantly risen in the past three decades as the number of jobs available has fallen. In 1980, there were 782,000 jobs in Philadelphia, while at the end of 2008, the city had just 661,000 jobs.

"The city would be a lot better off if that number started heading off in the other direction," Eichel added.

Another issue highlighted by the report was the high number of smokers and overweight people in the city.

In 2002, 23 percent of Americans smoked - as of 2008, that number had dropped to 20 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of smokers in Philadelphia has risen from 26 to 27 percent.

"That may or not be a significant increase, but what it tells you is that the percentage of adults who smoke in Philadelphia is higher than the national average and not declining here," Eichel said.

While 35 percent of residents identify as overweight and 29 percent as obese, the national average is not far off.

College junior and Health and Societies major Anup Das said, while Philadelphia was one of the most obese cities in 2000, many other cities have caught up - so Philadelphia's rates are fairly standard.

He emphasized the need for societal change and more options besides fast food but also noted recent initiatives to combat obesity, such as Penn's West Philly Recess Initiative.

One significant improvement cited by the report was the 15-percent decrease of major crimes in the city from 2000 to 2008.

Eichel said his and Ferrick's report contains a chart on which Philadelphia's crime rate is among the lower half of nine major U.S. cities.

Detroit, Cleveland, Houston, Phoenix, Baltimore and Washington have more per-capita crimes committed than Philadelphia.

Overall, though, Eichel was most concerned with the performance of the city's students.

"In the last academic year, 24 percent of students in high schools were suspended at least once, and in some of the larger high schools, the numbers were well over 50 percent," he said. "Those to me are startling numbers."

This article has been corrected to identify the source of the report as Pew Charitable Trusts. An earlier version said the report was by the Pew Research Center.

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