Editor's note: On Aug. 26, 2020, Figure 2.13, in the PDF, was updated to clarify the types of businesses and the geographic region covered by the U.S. Census Bureau data presented in the graphic. Figures 1.2 and 2.2 were previously updated May 1, 2019, to reflect newly released and updated population and employment numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In September 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau identified an error in its 2017 data for Philadelphia. The following topics were affected: employment status, health insurance, households and families, income and earnings, rent (no rent paid), and poverty. The Census Bureau does not plan to update the 2017 data, and Pew will not use the 2017 data in these topic areas in subsequent analyses.

The Big Picture

Like many cities, Philadelphia has some neighborhoods that are thriving and others that are faltering. But it has more of the former than it did a decade ago. Even so, the numbers at the heart of this year’s “State of the City” report show the contrasts between the city’s neighborhoods to be as dramatic as ever.

On a citywide basis, Philadelphia’s population has been rising steadily for more than a decade, a strong sign of civic well-being. But the growth has been concentrated in the center of the city and in pockets of the Northeast where immigrants have settled. In large swaths of North, Northwest, and West Philadelphia, the population has been declining or has stayed about the same.

Home sale prices have risen 63 percent since 2010, creating wealth in some parts of the city but not in others. Center City has seen the most substantial increases. In much of the Northeast, Northwest, and Southwest, however, the gains have been far more modest.

The percentage of adults with four-year college degrees continues to creep upward. But Philadelphia has relatively few neighborhoods where the share of degree-holders exceeds 50 percent; by contrast, in places such as Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, and Atlanta, that figure is approached or even surpassed citywide.

And Philadelphians’ median household income is above the national figure—more than $60,000—in only about a quarter of the city. In an area nearly as large, the median income is less than half that amount.

Another way to look at Philadelphia in 2019 is to focus on elements that have been changing citywide, mostly for the better, and on a few that haven’t shifted much at all.

In terms of job creation, Philadelphia has taken advantage of a relatively robust national economy—and outperformed it in some respects. Preliminary federal estimates put the city’s average number of jobs over the course of 2018 at the highest level since 1991, and unemployment at the lowest level since 2000.

The four-year high school graduation rate in public schools—now run by a local school board after nearly two decades of state control—continued its steady climb, reaching 69 percent for the Class of 2018. Although that’s far below the national rate of 84 percent, it’s 12 percentage points higher than it was a decade earlier.

As part of a trend several decades in the making, the population keeps becoming more diverse. Fifteen percent of the population is Hispanic, and 8 percent is Asian. Fourteen percent of Philadelphians are foreign-born, and another 13 percent have at least one foreign-born parent.

And in a city that traditionally has had one of the country’s highest levels of incarceration, the jail population fell to 5,251 in 2018, down from 8,932 just five years earlier—perhaps the most dramatic sign of a broad attempt by the city to reshape its criminal justice system.

However, the city’s homicide total represented one troubling change. Although violent crime overall dropped slightly in 2018, the number of murders rose to 351, up 11 percent in a single year and the largest total since 2007. Police officials attributed the increase, at least in part, to the city’s opioid crisis, one of the main elements that did not change as much last year as city officials had hoped.

Preliminary estimates indicate that the number of drug deaths in Philadelphia in 2018 was in the 1,100 range, slightly lower than the 1,217 recorded the previous year but still among the highest in the nation on a per capita basis. The opioid problem has brought several related problems; the city’s unsheltered homeless population has tripled since 2014, a situation most visible in the Kensington section.

And poverty remains a persistent challenge. The city’s poverty rate has been stuck in the 26 percent range for the past five years, a time when the rate has dropped in many other cities. Philadelphia has nearly 400,000 residents living below the poverty line, a fact that affects numerous aspects of city life.

Until the poverty numbers fall, they will remain, as they have for years, the context in which many other indicators of the state of the city are judged.