Cincinnati one of the fastest growing U.S. "creative class hotspots"

Richard Florida, who invented the "creative class" concept when writing about trends among young, educated and mobile workers, has a new article on The Atlantic's CityLab website comparing U.S. cities' concentrations of the creative class in 2014 vs. 2000. Thanks to the efforts of many people here, Greater Cincinnati has the fifth fastest growing population of creative class residents among the 50 largest metro areas.

Cincinnati's creative class grew by 21 percent between 2000 and 2014, placing it in heady company with Las Vegas, Indianapolis, Portland and Salt Lake City.

"While most studies equate talent with the share of adults who hold college degrees, the creative class gauges what workers actually do by identifying the occupations in which they're employed," Florida writes. "Since I first wrote about this class more than a decade ago, it has gained millions more members. Today it comprises roughly a third of the workforce and accounts for about half of all wages and salaries across the United States."

The top cities in 2014 for creative class residents as a share of overall population are still on the coasts: San Jose, Washington D.C., Boston, San Francisco and Hartford, Conn. But Florida is impressed that job growth associated with the creative class has made inroads in the Midwest.

"When all is said and done, the winners and losers of the creative class look much the same in 2014 as they did in 2000," he writes. "But it's heartening to see that some of the metros with the lowest creative class shares a decade and a half ago — Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Milwaukee — have made substantial gains. This bodes well for the future prosperity of these metros, demonstrating that substantial creative class growth can occur in places that once lagged pretty far behind."

Read the full CityLab story here.