I mean, if you were choosing your residence completely independent of your job, then yes, you'd obviously want to live in the center of the metro area, because it's the center of gravity, employment-wise. But that's not what people do -- the two decisions are interrelated.
You're absolutely right, there are a variety of factors that play into why people choose to live one place or another. I was not commenting on that dynamic. I was simply responding to posts that asserted, without any supporting evidence, that people live in the suburbs because of the greater availability of jobs. That is simply not a cogent argument supported by fact. There have been more jobs in the central cities than in the suburbs (relative to the population living in each area) for many decades, throughout the period of suburban sprawl. People simply do not (now, or historically) move to the suburbs because of the relatively greater availability of jobs. They do so for other reasons.
Also, you're forgetting that a significantly higher percentage of the population is of working age in the cities, while there are more elderly and, especially, more children in the suburbs. (I also suspect, although I admittedly don't have the statistics to verify this, that there are just a lot more working single working people and two-income families in the cities, and a lot more married couples with a homemaker in the suburbs.)
While you're gut may be right, there are over 475,000 jobs in Minneapolis and St Paul, but only 387,283 people in the labor force (per 2012 ACS). In the suburbs, there are significantly more people than there are jobs (again, per 2012 ACS). This fact does not support the contention that jobs are relatively more plentiful in the suburbs as a reason it makes more sense to live there than in the central cities.
Finally, I really don't think you can just ignore the disproportion in job types. Yes, if you're a white collar professional, as a I suspect most of the posters on this board are, the cities are ideal. But if you're not, they don't look nearly as good.
I'm not sure what kind of jobs you're referring to, but Met Council data shows Minneapolis has a higher ratio of low-income jobs (i.e., less than $41,000/year) to low-income workers than nearly any other community in the Metro, save Eden Prairie.
http://www.metrocouncil.org/getattachme ... c1fb/.aspx. The 70+% white collar jobs statistic people keep mentioning from the Strib article is referring to percentage of jobs created recently, not the overall composition of jobs.
If you're talking about jobs paying higher than $41,000/year for households with only a high school degree (or a little more), please enlighten me on where these abundant jobs can be found in the suburbs and in what field. Even if these jobs do exist, it is doubtful they are concentrated in locations where it would make sense for low-income households to move (due to the high social cost of moving, the relative impermanence of low-skill jobs, etc.).
Even if you were right, however, and there are plentiful low-skill high-wage jobs in the suburbs, my post had nothing to do with the composition of jobs. As I stated above, I am simply adding contextual data to counter the endless barrage of baseless assertion that has filled the last few pages of this topic.