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America’s Best and Brightest Are Headed to Boulder

  • Cumberland, Maryland, leads areas losing white-collar jobs
  • Boulder, Colorado, tops Bloomberg Brain Concentration Index
Views Of Wall Street As U.S. Stocks Slip
Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

The industrial city of Cumberland, Maryland, tucked in the Appalachians, illustrates the economic despair that helped Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency -- as well as efforts to alleviate it.

Cumberland tops the Bloomberg Brain Drain Index, which tracks metropolitan areas with the greatest loss of advanced-degree holders, white-collar jobs and earnings generated by employment in computer, engineering and science occupations. Once a thriving coal-mining and manufacturing center -- two sectors of the economy Trump pledged to revive -- Cumberland has struggled to draw new businesses.