SANTA MONICA, Calif. – The Providence-New Bedford-Fall River metropolitan area fell 20 slots this year to No. 170 in the Milken Institute / Greenstreet Real Estate Partners’ annual ranking of “best performing” U.S. cities.
The 2008 Best-Performing Cities Index, released yesterday, serves as a snapshot of where jobs are being created and sustained, The Milken Institute said in a statement accompanying the report’s release.
The index uses long- and short-term indicators of job growth, salary growth and technology output to score the nation’s largest 200 metropolitan areas; a separate list ranks 124 of the smallest metro areas.
This year’s results show a rebound in the technology sector, as well as strong activity in exports and energy production, The Milken Institute said.
The 2008 Top 10 cities, and their 2007 rankings, are:
No. 1. Provo-Orem, Utah (up from No. 8)
No. 2. Raleigh-Cary, N.C. (up from No. 10)
No. 3. Salt Lake City, Utah (up from No. 18)
No. 4. Austin-Round Rock, Texas (up from No. 20)
No. 5. Huntsville, Ala. (up from No. 16)
No. 6. Wilmington, N.C. (down from No. 2 last year)
No. 7. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas (unchanged from 2007)
No. 8. Tacoma, Wash.(up from No. 50)
No. 9. Olympia, Wash. (up from No. 37 in the 2007 ranking of small metropolitan areas)
No. 10. Charleston, N.C./S.C. (up from No. 12 in last year’s large-metro ranking)
Several cities that topped the rankings last year drop steeply because of the downturn in housing and construction markets, The Milken Institute said. For instance, the Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif., metro area plunged from 22nd in 2007 to 145 this year – the biggest decline of any area nationwide. Meanwhile, manufacturing cities in the industrial Midwest continued their long-term decline.
The Providence metro area – No. 150 nationwide in the 2007 report (READ MORE) – has been hurt both by the housing and construction downturn and by a decline in manufacturing, the 2008 analysis found. The nearby Worcester area also lost ground, falling to 156th this year from 146th in 2007, while the Norwich-New London metropolitan area in Connecticut fell to 176th from its 2007 ranking of 145th.
Gaining ground, however, were the Boston-Quincy metropolis, which surged to 118th this year from 153rd the year before, and the Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford metro area, which climbed to 149th this year from 160th in 2007.
The Milken Institute is a nonprofit economic think-tank whose stated mission is “to improve the lives and economic conditions of diverse populations around the world by helping business and public policy leaders identify and implement innovative ideas for creating broad-based prosperity.” For more information, including the full Milken Institute / Greenstreet Real Estate Partners Best-Performing Cities 2008 report, visit www.MilkenInstitute.org.
