CLEVELAND, Ohio - Let's talk about the good things.

More people are living in downtown Cleveland - 14,000 or thereabouts, based on estimates released this week. City-center real estate values, which dove during the recession, are working their way back up, repairing damage to a key source of tax revenue for the city and Cuyahoga County. And we're experiencing a shift toward higher-wage jobs, with more downtown workers making upwards of $40,000 a year.

Now let's talk about the problems.

Employment in the city's central business district still hasn't returned to pre-recession levels. The office market continues to struggle, even as developers transform empty space into apartments. And as downtown evolves, leaders face the challenge of finding a balance between living spaces and workplaces - and the question of whether the core city's growth will benefit a broad array of people, not just high-end renters and highly-paid workers.

That's the central message of a study being released today by the Center for Population Dynamics at Cleveland State University, which explored downtown growth patterns and tried to quantify their economic impact on the city and the region.

The Drury Plaza hotel opened in late April in the 1931 Cleveland Board of Education building near the convention center.

"We've made some progress, but we have a long way to go to get to the point where we make a dent in the fiscal outlook," said Richey Piiparinen, a CSU demographer who put together the study with fellow researchers Charlie Post and Jim Russell.

This progress report, of sorts, was commissioned by the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, a nonprofit group that represents property owners. Executives at the alliance were looking for a better sense of what's improving, what's lagging and what needs to be done.

They asked for the data at a time when blockbuster downtown projects are on the drawing board but political leaders are making efforts to spread cash around, between downtown and surrounding city neighborhoods and between Cleveland and the county's 58 other communities. Casino-tax revenues that flow to the county, for example, are available for suburban developments, after a few years of being limited to downtown investments.

"Certainly, the report will become a source of information to help us better advocate for continued investment in downtown, in order to serve the city and the county more broadly," said Michael Deemer, the alliance's executive vice president for business development. "We were interested in the data and where the data might lead us."

Here's what they learned:

* Nearly 95,000 people worked in downtown Cleveland in 2014, according to the CSU research paper. That's an improvement from a few years ago.

Yet there were 10,000 more jobs downtown in 2008 and almost 20,000 more back in 2002. The recent upswing is encouraging, as a revitalized downtown attracts new employers including IBM and New York Life Insurance Co. But the central business district still is a smaller corporate hub than it used to be, after decades of gradual job losses to the suburbs.

The once-empty office tower at 1717 East Ninth St. is now an apartment building, with a furniture store and a deli on the ground floor.

* The taxable value of downtown commercial real estate dropped by 8.8 percent - or $112.6 million - from 2001 to 2014, based on inflation-adjusted numbers. The office market drove those losses, even as apartment conversions at buildings including the former Ameritrust complex and the old East Ohio Building at 1717 East Ninth St. bucked the downward trend.

The combined taxable value of downtown apartment properties rose by 35.3 percent during that period, gaining by $21.9 million. So apartments are generating more tax revenues, even with the city's policy of offering property-tax breaks for projects that meet certain green-building standards. But housing-market gains aren't enough, yet, to offset office-market pain.

"Part of our challenge is that, even regionally, we aren't growing the office market that aggressively," said Joe Marinucci, the alliance's chief executive officer.

With limited demand from corporate tenants, landlords and downtown advocates have tried to reduce the supply of older office space, trimming vacancy by taking buildings out of the market and turning them into residences. Early this year, the alliance counted just over 6,000 apartments downtown, with a vacancy rate of only 3 percent.

Office-market vacancy, meanwhile, was 16.8 percent for downtown's newest and best properties, known as Class A buildings, according to real estate brokerage CBRE Group, Inc. Throw in mid-level, or Class B, buildings, and downtown's overall office vacancy was close to 20 percent during the first three months of this year.

"It's a validation of the strategy to pursue converting commercial space to residential use, both to meet the demand for downtown housing and to improve office-market dynamics," Deemer said of the CSU research.

* Center-city workers are making more money.

From early 2013 to 2014, the average annual wage for a downtown job was $73,561, while the average worker in Cuyahoga County made $48,257. Only 7 percent of businesses in the county are located downtown, but those companies account for 17.4 percent of total income in the county.

And the pool of higher-paid workers is growing. Piiparinen and his fellow researchers found that more than 52,000 downtown workers make at least $40,000 a year. That's up from just over 42,000 workers at that pay level in 2002.

But there appear to be fewer opportunities for lower-paid workers, particularly for people making between $15,000 and $40,000 a year. That group dwindled from nearly 48,000 people to just under 26,000 people from 2002 to 2014, the researchers found.

"Cleveland is pivoting away from an older, lower-paid economy to a newer, higher-end economy, which is finally translating to jobs and real-estate appreciation," Piiparinen said. "That's a good thing. But there's a lot of research that shows that when you pivot, inequality by necessity exacerbates. You can see that with the loss of low- and middle-income jobs downtown. ... I think we need an urban core that has opportunity and access for all skill levels and all wage levels."

*Downtown's residential population grew by 68.6 percent from 2000 to 2014, even as Cleveland's population fell by 18 percent and the county lost 9 percent of its residents.

Two years ago, Census data put the center-city's population at slightly more than 12,600 people. Today, that number is closer to 14,000, based on the alliance's quarterly surveys. Most of those people are renters, since there are only 880 for-sale homes downtown.

The education level and affluence of downtown residents is climbing, too. The number of downtown households making at least $75,000 a year jumped by 260 percent from 2000 to 2014, while the number of households making at least $150,000 rose by 389 percent.

Nearly a third of downtown residents are age 25 to 34, but Millennials aren't the only renters driving a resurgence. Aging Baby Boomers, some of them longtime suburbanites, also are moving downtown, where they have access to restaurants, entertainment, sports venues, public spaces and other amenities.

* Health care is the largest employer of downtown residents, followed by professional services such as law, accounting, architecture and research. In 2013, nearly 58 percent of those residents worked in the city of Cleveland, walking to jobs downtown or taking public transportation or driving to places including University Circle. Beachwood was the top suburban employer of downtown residents, followed by Independence, Solon, Brook Park and Westlake.

* Downtown employees - including people who live elsewhere - also tend to work in high-end service businesses, such as law, finance, insurance and engineering. Restaurant and hotel jobs accounted for only 6 percent of downtown jobs in 2013, a somewhat surprising statistic considering the recent growth of the city's hospitality industry. As new hotels including the Schofield, Drury Plaza and Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hilton Cleveland Downtown come online, hiring hundreds of workers, the numbers might shift.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," the CSU researchers wrote in their analysis of downtown, highlighting valuable investments in downtown's public spaces, nightlife and dining scene. "But all play and no work makes Jack an absent customer - making it difficult for the bottom lines of local businesses."

In other words, downtown Cleveland needs to find a way to add jobs as it adds residents - and vice versa. And if the center city can figure out the right formula for sustainable growth, then surrounding neighborhoods and suburbs stand to benefit from higher tax revenues and a healthier core.

But this race has just started, the CSU study shows. And downtown Cleveland's revival is far from the finish line.

"We need to not repeat some of the mistakes that may have been made in the past, with regard to downtown Cleveland comebacks," Deemer said. "And one of those mistakes, in the '90s, was relenting and letting go of the momentum. Now is not a time to take our foot off the gas. Now's the time to floor it."