Editing Deindustrialization (section)

== Economic Restructuring ==

As manufacturing declined, Philadelphia's economy restructured around services, education, healthcare, and professional employment. The "eds and meds" economy—anchored by universities like Penn and Temple, and health systems like Jefferson and Penn Medicine—grew to become a major employment sector. Center City redeveloped as a commercial and residential area serving the knowledge economy. Suburbs attracted corporate headquarters and office parks. The regional economy actually grew, but growth concentrated in sectors and locations that did not benefit those displaced from manufacturing. The new economy created opportunities for the educated but provided fewer paths to middle-class security for those without college degrees.<ref name="adams"/>

The transition created a more unequal Philadelphia. The new economy paid well for professional and technical workers but offered mostly low-wage service jobs for others. The middle of the income distribution—skilled manufacturing jobs that had enabled workers without advanced education to achieve middle-class security—hollowed out. Philadelphia became a more polarized city: wealthy professionals in revitalized neighborhoods, impoverished residents in declining ones, with less in between. This polarization shaped politics, social relations, and the physical geography of a city where deindustrialization had ended one economic era without providing comparable alternatives for those it displaced.<ref name="wilson"/>