Local economies, those dominated by stable industries, could be relatively well-cushioned. BusinessWeek.com worked with data from PolicyMap.com, a demographics and data site run by Philadelphia’s Reinvestment Fund, to identify the best places to live during a recession. We looked at places where large portions of the population worked in anticyclical industries such as government, health care, education, agriculture, and legal services.
Madison has a second recession buffer: the University of Wisconsin. More than 17% of the working-age population works in education, according to PolicyMap. Colleges don’t necessarily flourish in bad times, but they don’t go out of business either.