metro areas

Employees working in metro areas scattered along the coasts tended to get paid better last year than their middle-America counterparts. See an interactive map.

General Motors may add dealers in big metro areas on the U.S. coasts because it expects sales there to grow, two top executives said Saturday.

Home prices are falling faster in the nation's largest cities, and a record number of foreclosures are expected to push prices down further through next year.

The foreclosure crisis intensified across a majority of large U.S. metropolitan areas this summer, with Chicago and Seattle — cities outside of the states that have shouldered the worst of the housing downturn — seeing a sharp increase in foreclosure warnings.

Unemployment rates fell in April for more than 90 percent of the nation's 372 largest metro areas as hiring picked up around the country.

Foreclosure activity fell in 14 of the top 20 U.S. metropolitan areas in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, even though total U.S. foreclosures rose, RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

Nearly half the metro areas in the U.S. began an economic recovery by the end of 2009, according to new Adversity Index data for December from Moody's Economy.com and msnbc.com.

Bill Dedman reports.

The jobless rate rose in most Illinois metropolitan areas in October.

The recession has finally endedin 79 metro areas, according to Adversity Index data from msnbc.com and Moody's Economy.com.

Msnbc.com's Bill Dedman reports.

In a sharp improvement, the largest U.S. metropolitan areas were evenly split in July between those where unemployment rates rose from June and those where rates fell.