*SMLR-Net, the source of selected news on labor and employment relations and human resource management.*

*Wall St. Journal, June 28, 2012, Real Time Economics Blog, http://on.wsj.com/NSeEnE*

Economic Center of Gravity: 2,000-Year Round Trip By Conor Dougherty

The world’s economic center of gravity has shifted further over the past decade than at any time in history and is set to accelerate further as more developing-world citizens leave rural farms for cities.

From 2000 to 2010, the economic center of gravity — the geographic center

of the world’s annual economic growth — moved about 140 km (87 miles) per year, according to this reporthttp://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/urbanization/urban_world_cities_and_the_rise_of_the_consuming_class from the *McKinsey Global Institute*. In 2010 it was over northern Russia, compared with somewhere over the Arctic Ocean in 2000.

That eastward movement was the fastest jump since A.D. 1, and was particularly brisk from 2007 from 2010 when the recession stalled growth in the rich world while developing economies kept humming along. The economic center of gravity shifted by approximately 315 miles south east between 2007 and 2010.

Of course, that’s all just a very fancy way of saying Asian economies are big and are growing really fast. But, as the McKinsey paper notes, it isn’t so much that countries like China and India are growing fast — it’s that their cities are. As more and more of the developing world clusters into a number of rapidly growing mid-to-large-sized metropolitan areas, it is driving growth and productivity while elevating millions of poor to the ranks of the consumer class.

For the full text of this article, see: http://bit.ly/NSfVLq For the full report and executive summary of the report this article is based on, Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class, from McKinsey Global Institute,

See: http://bit.ly/NSfVLq