Some Cities Will Be Safer in a Recession

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Farms and grocery stores tend to be relatively stable because even though people might not be able to afford restaurant food, they still need to eat. Lawyers also can find stable work in a recession, although their success has a lot to do with their particular field (commercial litigators and bankruptcy lawyers might be busy while real estate lawyers might not be).

We had hoped to include energy in our analysis despite the recent decline in oil prices, because gasoline and natural gas prices are still relatively high, and energy-producing states such as Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming are benefiting. We weren't able to collect town-level data on energy jobs, but some of the places that came up on our list—such as Anchorage, Alaska; Baton Rouge, La.; and Lubbock, Tex., are located in energy centers. Baton Rouge and New Orleans have energy-related jobs, but the main strength of their economies is a post-Katrina construction boom.

Flatness in Houston

If energy were factored in, Houston might have shot up to the top of the ranking.

"Texas is buffered, but it's not insulated," said Edward Friedman, an economist who covers Texas for Moody's Economy.com (MCO). "It's definitely not going to keep on growing the way it is. While the rest of country is in significant decline, you'll have flatness in Houston."

Boston, which came in fifth on our list, doesn't have as much protection as Houston or Washington. But it is surrounded by major universities such as Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts. It's also a medical hub, with some of the best hospitals in the country. But it also has a substantial number of employees working at mutual funds and banks, which will continue to get hit in the financial crisis.

Philadelphia might even have a stronger hand: Like Boston, it has hospitals and major universities such as the University of Pennsylvania. It does not, however, have so many employees in the financial-services sector. About 26% of the population is either in health care or education.

The city is also perfectly positioned close to the population centers of the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York, and is likely to attract nearby visitors who want to avoid the expense of long-distance travel, said Moody's Economy.com senior economist Ryan Sweet.

Black Eye for Gotham

The recession is "going to leave New York with a black eye, but Philadelphia will escape only bruised," Sweet said. "Philadelphia was never an outperformer during the expansion, and that's why we expect a short and shallow recession here."

It might be impossible to escape the recession entirely because the crisis is tied to the credit markets. Businesses, which often have lumpy revenues month to month, need short-term credit to make payroll and long-term credit to invest in future growth. And consumers use credit to buy houses and iPods.

"This will be a consumer-led downturn: It affects whatever the consumer touches. So all those [businesses] in the pipeline leading to the consumer are going to feel the pinch," said Alan Beaulieu, principal at the Institute for Trend Research, a private economic consulting firm. "It becomes so that there's very little that's not impacted."

Click here to see the best places in the U.S. to ride out a recession.

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Gopal writes about real estate for BusinessWeek in New York.