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Researchers have given the current economic downturn a new name — the crabgrass recession.

A majority of the nation’s metro areas, including Greensboro-High Point, have seen their suburban unemployment rates outpace those of their core cities.

In fact, Greensboro-High Point has one of the highest suburban unemployment rates — 12.8 percent — among the top 100 U.S. metro areas. Only Charlotte and three California cities produced higher figures in May.

“The numbers for Greensboro and Charlotte are terrible,” said Keith Debbage, professor of urban geography at UNCG. “We have the fifth highest suburban unemployment rate in the country. The only redeeming (factor) is that Charlotte has the fourth worst rate.”

In a report released today, the Brookings Institution in Washington said the nation’s suburbs are feeling more pain in this recession than they did in the national downturn in 2001-02.

The phrase “crabgrass recession” grew out of the findings that suburbs have suffered disproportionately in this recession.

“Greensboro very much follows the trend that we are seeing (nationally),” said Elizabeth Kneebone, co-author of the report called The Landscape of Recession. “The region has seen unemployment increase at a faster rate in the suburbs than in the cities in the past year.”

The report said the core cities of Greensboro-High Point had an unemployment rate of 10.9 percent in May, a 5.3 percentage point increase over the past 12 months.

The local suburban rate jumped 6.6 percentage points over the same period. That’s the third highest increase in the country.

Brookings, a nonpartisan, public-policy think tank, said in a report last month that the pain of the recession has been unequally distributed across the country.

Again, that report showed that the Greensboro-High Point metro area, which includes Guilford, Rockingham and Randolph counties, had been hit harder than those that include Raleigh and Charlotte.

In the current report, Brookings researchers said newer, lower-density suburbs — also called exurbs — have been hardest hit by the recent jumps in unemployment.

Brookings classified both Rockingham, with an unemployment rate of 14.3 percent in May, and Randolph, with a rate of 12.1 percent, as exurbs.

“We know what a terrible time those counties have had with the recession,” Debbage said. “That is what elevated our (suburban) unemployment.”

The report defined all of Guilford outside High Point and Greensboro as emerging suburbs, which also have been struggling.

“If you look at the indicators they tell a story of how serious the recession has been in the Triad,” said Don Jud, professor emeritus at the Bryan School of Business and Economics at UNCG. “We have been hit harder than the national average.”

The report also says that as unemployment has continued to rise so has the demand for safety net services. Again, suburban areas have been harder hit.

Locally, initial unemployment insurance claims have jumped 137.3 percent in Guilford County in the past year, but 167.3 percent in Randolph and Rockingham.

Also, the federal supplemental nutrition assistance program, formerly known as food stamps, rose 15.5 percent in Guilford and 20.4 percent in Randolph and Rockingham.

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com