Economic Returns Harder to See in London's Changing Olympic Area

"But durable economic effects, as opposed to physical ones, are so far hard to spot. Newham, the borough which overlaps most with the Olympic Park, has London's lowest employment rate, stubbornly around a dozen percentage points below the average (see chart). According to the ODA, 25% of workers on the park live in the "host boroughs" (Barking and Dagenham, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest around the site, and Greenwich, across the Thames); but no one knows how many of them have moved in only for as long as the work lasts."

Permanent jobs are part of the plan for the post-Olympics area, but it's uncertain where those jobs will come from and when.