New Geography

Author: Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

  • The Cities Creating the Most Tech Jobs in 2017

    A growing tech industry is often considered the ultimate sign of a healthy local economy. By that measure, the Bay Area still stands at the top of the heap in the United States, but our survey of the metropolitan areas with the strongest tech job growth turns up some surprising places not usually thought of as tech meccas.

    Charlotte, N.C., is more often associated with banks than bots. Yet from 2006 to 2016, tech businesses in the Queen City expanded their job count by 62%, with 18% growth from 2014-16, the fastest clip in the nation. Meanwhile, over the past decade, the metro area logged a 23% increase in the number of workers in STEM occupations (science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related jobs). This rapid job growth and strong recent momentum, driven partly by health care and environmental technology, ranks it second on our list. In the past 10 years, the region has added 7,400 jobs in two key high-tech business services sectors, custom programming and systems design services, along with nearly 700% growth in software publishing employment. To be sure, the share of tech jobs in Charlotte’s economy remains one third that of Silicon Valley, and the tech and STEM workforces are far smaller, but quality of life, lower housing prices, as well as decent plane connections, seem likely to help it to continue to attract tech workers.

    To determine the metro areas that are generating the most tech jobs, Mark Schill of Praxis Strategy Group analyzed employment data from the nation’s 53 largest metropolitan statistical areas from 2006 to 2016, with extra weighting for growth from 2014-16 to give credit for current momentum. Half our ranking is based on employment growth at companies in high-technology industries, such as software and engineering services. (This includes all workers at these companies, some of whom, like janitors or receptionists, do not perform tech functions). Half is based on changes in the number of workers classified as having science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related jobs (aka STEM). This captures the many tech workers in industries not primarily associated with technology, such as finance and business services. Data is sourced from EMSI.

    Another surprising up and comer is Indianapolis in fifth place. The share of STEM jobs in the local economy, 5%, is close to the national average but STEM employment is up 18% since 2006. Tech employment has grown rapidly, with the job count at tech companies up an impressive 68% since 2006, led by 1,700% growth at Internet-based businesses and 8,100 new jobs in custom programming and systems design.

    California-based companies are in the forefront such as Salesforce, which is adding 800 employees to its already 1,600-person office in Indianapolis. Similarly No. 7 Nashville is poaching jobs from the Bay Area with firms such as Lyft but also developing its own roster of defense and health-related tech firms. Since 2006, Nashville added jobs in nearly every tech industry we track, led by 3,700 new jobs in systems design, 1,800 in data processing, and 1,100 in engineering services.

    The Bay Area continues to excel in large part as a product of the rapid growth over the past decade of social media and business applications for technology. The San Francisco metro area, which includes tech-heavy suburban San Mateo County, ranks first. The City by the Bay and its environs, a hub for technical service firms like Uber and Salesforce.com, has experienced remarkable 90% growth in tech employment and a 36.5% expansion in STEM jobs from 2006 to 2016. Silicon Valley, with a concentration of tech industry workers 75% higher than upstart San Francisco, has also achieved rapid job creation, with tech industry employment up 80% and the number STEM workers increasing 32%, ranking it fourth. STEM employment per capita is roughly twice that of San Francisco.

    Other familiar faces make the top 10: No. 3 Austin, No. 6 Raleigh-Durham, No. 8 Seattle and No. 10 Denver. These lower-cost alternatives to the Bay Area have all been attracting people and companies from pricier California. Yet these areas too face rising housing prices, which is a challenge particularly for workers entering their early 30s and looking to settle down.

    Easily the biggest surprise on the list is Detroit, which improved its position to ninth, a remarkable 30-place jump from the last edition of this list in 2015. It generated 26% growth in high-tech jobs and boosted its STEM employment by 8.4%. Despite the decline of the central city, the Detroit metro area has never faded as a technical center; due largely to the auto industry its per capita STEM employment has long been above the national average. This is reflected in a post-recession boom in engineering services in the region – some 14,000 new jobs since 2006 – leaving Detroit with a concentration of engineering services more than three times the national average. Its percentage of STEM workers is 50% above the U.S. norm, roughly equivalent to that of Raleigh-Durham, Boston and Denver.

    More help could be on the way from a reviving urban core, says Chicago-based analyst Pete Saunders, himself a Detroit native. There is some evidence that the city itself is beginning to attract skilled and better educated workers. Microsoft has set up an outpost downtown for 165 employees and there is a small but evolving start-up scene.

    Winners, Losers and Stagnaters

    Detroit’s rise since our last study tells us something about the importance of industry to tech and the allure of lower housing prices. Another clear Rust Belt winner in this year’s survey is Pittsburgh. Still an energy and industrial center, and with low housing prices, the former steel capital jumped 10 places on our list to 21st. Pittsburgh has gained tech momentum as a center for autonomous vehicles, with Uber and Ford setting up operations there to tap talent at Carnegie Mellon. Like other upstart regions, Pittsburgh has seen a rise in high-tech business services, with 2,400 new jobs in engineering and 3,900 in systems design.

    Rochester, N.Y., is up 13 places to 36th, and Washington, D.C., gained 12 spots to 38th, while No. 41 Milwaukee and No. 25 New York both rose 10 places. New York’s improvement is tied to social media and a surge in biotech research and development. The region saw nearly 400% growth in employment at internet and web-based firms, but was not as competitive in many other tech sectors in our analysis. This plays to the city’s communications industry strengths, as well as Wall Street-connected fintech growth. While the metro area has by far the nation’s largest number of STEM workers at 450,500, in part by virtue of its massive population, New York is certainly not likely to emerge as a Silicon Valley competitor –the number of STEM jobs per capita in the New York metro area remains below the national average.

    Many traditional tech powerhouses have just held onto their positions, with little movement up or down. No. 16 Portland and No. 18 Boston held their own. So too, despite the excitement around Snapchat’s IPO, did Los Angeles at 37th. Its per capita STEM employment has now disturbingly dropped below the national average.

    And then there are the big losers, which include some traditional tech powerhouses. Despite its powerful medical and chip technology industry, San Diego dropped sixteen places to 39th. Houston dropped the most, some 39 places to 43rd, due to the energy bust. Yet it’s too early to count either of these places out in the long run since they both retain larger than average shares of STEM workers. A Trump defense boom could help jumpstart San Diego and Houston’s energy industry could be a prime beneficiary of the President’s “America first” energy policy.

    Future Prospects

    In the immediate future, no place will challenge the Bay Area as the mecca of technology and STEM employment. Other metro areas may now be growing as fast — and Charlotte even faster — but the Bay Area juggernaut has a big lead, even if it may finally be slowing down. James Doti, who directs the regional forecast at Chapman University, estimates that the job growth rate in the Valley’s information technology sector dropped to 2% in 2015 from a torrid 9% the previous year.

    Doti and other observers trace this in large part to the area’s soaring housing costs, now the highest in the nation. This particularly impacts millennials, many of whom are now entering their 30s, the prime age for family formation and home buying. If millennials continue their current rate of savings, notes one study, it would take them 28 years to save up enough to afford a median-priced house in the San Francisco area, but only five years in Charlotte, or three years in Atlanta.

    In 2015 7,500 more Americans left the Valley than arrived, the first time there’s been a net loss since 2011, according to the Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project.

    If these trends represent the future, there could be an increasing exodus of jobs and talent from the Valley. In many of the upstart regions, there likely will be opportunities for economic migrants in the robustly growing (if less “sexy”) tech services sector, which includes engineering, systems design and custom programming.

    The big question is who will be the biggest beneficiaries, already established tech hubs like Seattle or Denver, or a long list of rising wannabes?

    In a word, as Sherlock Holmes would say, “the game’s afoot.” The future of regional economies around the nation could be at stake.

    2017 Metropolitan Tech-STEM Growth Index
    Rank Region (MSA) Score 2006-2016 Tech Industry Growth 2014-2016 Tech Industry Growth 2016 Tech Industry LQ 2006-2016 STEM Occuptn Growth 2014-2016 STEM Occuptn Growth 2016 STEM Occuptn LQ
    1 San Francisco 98.7 90.0% 17.5% 2.87 36.5% 9.9% 1.79
    2 Charlotte, NC 88.7 62.1% 18.0% 0.91 28.5% 10.4% 1.01
    3 Austin 86.2 76.6% 14.0% 1.93 35.4% 7.4% 1.76
    4 San Jose 85.9 79.6% 12.5% 5.12 32.2% 8.6% 3.43
    5 Indianapolis 72.4 68.1% 16.8% 0.96 17.8% 5.3% 0.98
    6 Raleigh, NC 70.3 46.9% 8.2% 2.07 31.9% 7.0% 1.56
    7 Nashville 65.7 75.6% 12.4% 0.71 13.7% 4.5% 0.80
    8 Seattle 62.7 47.7% 6.9% 2.32 28.5% 4.7% 1.89
    9 Detroit 61.6 26.1% 14.8% 2.12 9.6% 8.4% 1.50
    10 Denver 60.8 40.3% 6.9% 1.72 25.6% 5.5% 1.48
    11 Salt Lake City, UT 60.2 38.9% 6.5% 1.41 24.5% 6.0% 1.19
    12 Dallas 59.7 43.2% 9.3% 1.13 20.5% 5.0% 1.17
    13 Phoenix 59.5 48.5% 12.2% 0.93 10.1% 5.8% 1.16
    14 Grand Rapids 58.8 34.0% 8.9% 0.46 13.4% 7.9% 0.88
    15 Kansas City, MO 57.1 37.5% 9.8% 1.48 15.7% 5.5% 1.16
    16 Portland, OR 53.4 30.4% 7.4% 1.07 16.2% 5.5% 1.36
    17 Tampa 52.4 20.9% 10.6% 0.94 3.8% 8.3% 0.90
    18 Boston, MA 50.5 38.4% 6.6% 2.21 15.3% 3.8% 1.55
    19 Louisville, KY 50.4 27.6% 8.3% 0.57 15.0% 4.3% 0.69
    20 Atlanta 47.6 23.7% 7.7% 1.23 11.8% 4.6% 1.13
    21 Pittsburgh, PA 46.9 32.5% 7.8% 1.15 12.8% 2.8% 1.06
    22 San Antonio 46.1 28.2% 1.5% 0.82 22.2% 3.4% 0.83
    23 Orlando 45.9 8.5% 7.4% 0.89 8.4% 6.8% 0.78
    24 Cincinnati, OH 43.5 21.9% 6.6% 0.81 9.3% 4.1% 1.04
    25 New York 43.3 30.4% 7.7% 0.98 5.9% 3.4% 0.89
    26 Miami 41.9 8.9% 8.4% 0.62 2.3% 6.0% 0.63
    27 Sacramento 40.9 41.0% 7.5% 0.90 3.8% 1.7% 1.26
    28 Baltimore 39.7 25.1% 4.2% 1.52 12.5% 2.1% 1.38
    29 Minneapolis 39.4 18.2% 4.7% 1.04 9.3% 3.4% 1.29
    30 Richmond, VA 38.0 20.3% 6.2% 0.78 4.8% 3.1% 0.98
    31 Jacksonville, FL 37.9 23.1% 3.1% 0.80 7.3% 3.5% 0.76
    32 Chicago, IL 37.5 22.6% 6.8% 0.92 3.7% 2.5% 0.93
    33 Las Vegas 37.2 6.6% 5.6% 0.53 1.5% 5.6% 0.47
    34 Hartford 36.7 34.7% 4.3% 1.00 3.2% 2.1% 1.14
    35 Columbus, OH 36.5 9.9% 2.9% 1.05 11.9% 3.1% 1.18
    36 Rochester, NY 35.1 27.1% 5.1% 0.76 1.1% 2.5% 1.10
    37 Los Angeles 34.0 16.4% 6.6% 0.84 0.2% 2.7% 0.93
    38 Washington, DC 32.4 4.8% 3.8% 2.54 6.7% 2.7% 1.99
    39 San Diego 31.2 19.1% -2.2% 1.62 10.0% 2.6% 1.38
    40 Cleveland 29.0 14.1% 3.3% 0.73 1.4% 1.8% 0.97
    41 Milwaukee 28.7 2.9% 4.6% 0.77 1.0% 2.5% 1.02
    42 Oklahoma City, OK 28.6 7.1% 3.9% 0.52 8.4% 0.0% 0.96
    43 Houston 28.4 18.5% -2.3% 1.09 20.0% -1.8% 1.22
    44 St. Louis, MO 27.2 2.8% 4.5% 0.86 0.0% 2.0% 0.96
    45 Buffalo 27.1 22.9% 1.0% 0.77 2.4% 0.7% 0.79
    46 Memphis, TN 26.3 30.8% -5.8% 0.39 3.6% 2.6% 0.59
    47 Providence 25.0 8.0% 2.5% 0.72 0.4% 1.2% 0.88
    48 Philadelphia, PA 22.2 2.5% 1.7% 1.09 -1.8% 1.5% 1.06
    49 Virginia Beach 18.8 -3.0% -1.7% 1.03 2.2% 1.0% 1.09
    50 Birmingham 18.4 1.4% 2.0% 0.62 -4.2% 0.4% 0.81
    51 Riverside 16.5 -15.4% 0.8% 0.30 -4.6% 2.2% 0.48
    52 New Orleans 16.0 21.6% -1.9% 0.62 -0.8% -2.3% 0.67
    53 Tucson, AZ 15.9 6.0% -1.9% 86.8% -2.5% 0.0 1.1


    To determine the metro areas that are generating the most tech jobs, Mark Schill of Praxis Strategy Group analyzed employment data from the nation’s 53 largest metropolitan statistical areas from 2006 to 2016, with extra weighting for growth from 2014-16 to give credit for current momentum. Half our ranking is based on employment growth at companies in high-technology industries, such as software and engineering services. (This includes all workers at these companies, some of whom, like janitors or receptionists, do not perform tech functions). Half is based on changes in the number of workers classified as having science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related jobs (aka STEM). This captures the many tech workers in industries not primarily associated with technology, such as finance and business services. Data is sourced from EMSI.

    This piece originally appeared at Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, was published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Mark Schill is a community and corporate strategy consultant with Praxis Strategy Group and Managing Editor of New Geography.

    Charlotte photo by Daritto7117 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

  • America’s Next Boom Towns: Regions to Watch in 2016

    Which cities have the best chance to prosper in the coming decade? The question is a complex one, and as the economy changes, so, too, will the best-positioned cities.

    To identify the cities most likely to boom over the next 10 years, we took the 53 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country (those with populations exceeding 1 million) and ranked them based on eight metrics indicative of past, present and future vitality. We factored in, equally, the percentage of children in the population, the birth rate, net domestic migration, the percentage of the population aged 25-44 with a bachelor’s degree, income growth, the unemployment rate, and population growth.

    The results show two divergent kinds of ascendant cities. One is driven by the tech industry, the in-migration of educated people and sharply rising incomes; the other type is what we describe as “opportunity cities,” which tend to have a diverse range of industries, lower costs and larger numbers of families. We may be one country, but the future is being shaped by two very different urban archetypes.

    The Lone Star Model

    The most vital parts of urban America can be encapsulated largely in one five-letter word: Texas. All four of Texas’ major metro areas made our top 10. Austin, Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth and San Antonio are very different places, but they all have enjoyed double-digit job growth from 2010 through 2014, well above the national average of 8.1%. They also all have posted income growth well above the national average.

    But the biggest divergence from the pack may be demographics. The Texas cities have become major people magnets, with huge growth in their populations of young, educated millennials and households with children. The clear star of the show is No. 1-ranked Austin, which has become the nation’s superlative economy over the past decade.

    Austin leads the pack in terms of population growth, up 13.2% between 2010 and 2014, in large part driven by the strongest rate of net domestic in-migration of the 53 largest metropolitan areas over the same span: 16.4 per 1,000 residents. The educated proportion of its population between 25 and 44 is 43.7%, well ahead of the national average of 33.6%, although somewhat below the traditional “brain center” cities of the Northeast and the West Coast.

    The other Texas cities also do well across the board, with strong domestic in-migration, low unemployment and a rising population of young families. The biggest question marks going ahead involve No. 6 Houston, which benefited heavily from the energy boom and now is dealing with the consequences of the oil price collapse. Most economists do not see a total meltdown as occurred in the 1980s, but it would not be a surprise to see Houston fall out of our top 10 until energy prices recover. Economist Patrick Jankowski projects some 9,000 layoffs in the energy sector locally in 2016 but enough growth elsewhere — for example 9,000 new jobs in medical services — to keep employment expanding, although far below the pace of the last few years. The other, less energy-dependent Texas metro areas seem likely to continue their stellar performance.

    The Flyover Superstars

    There are several dynamic, fast-growing metro areas elsewhere in the country that seem likely to increase their status in the coming years, mostly in the Southeast and the Intermountain West. Like the Texas cities, these areas enjoy lower costs than the Northeast or California, notably for housing, and tend to be pro-business. All are experiencing significant population growth.

    No. 2 Salt Lake City and No. 4 Denver have been expanding for years, with significant tech-sector growth. Both are logging population increases, with Denver benefiting from strong domestic in-migration while Salt Lake City has the highest birth rate among major metro areas, 16.9 per 1,000 women from 2010-14, largely due to its fecund Mormon population.

    The Southeast has a number of ascendant cities led by No. 5 Raleigh, which, like Austin, has emerged as a tech hot-spot. Some 49% of all Raleigh residents aged 25 to 44 have a four-year degree, higher than any other metro area in the South. The national average is 33.6%.

    The Glorious Gated Community

    Unlike the rest of our rising cities, the Bay Area’s two major metro areas — No. 3 San Jose and No. 9 San Francisco — do not boast rapid population growth, and have low rates of family formation and births. Yet the area’s technology domination has made it so rich that it blows by most regions in terms of positioning for the future.

    The big divergence here is income growth. Since 2010, the two metro areas have enjoyed the strongest expansion in earnings in the nation – 9.2% in the San Jose area between 2010 and 2015 and 7.8% in San Francisco. Silicon Valley and the Bay Area also boast extraordinarily well-educated young workforces. In San Jose 53.5% of workers aged 25 to 44 have a college degree, the third-highest share in the nation, and San Francisco ranks fourth at 52.4%.

    So why are people not flocking to these areas? San Jose is net negative for domestic migration over the time we examined while San Francisco made modest gains only after years of net out-migration. Much of the problem lies in high housing prices, which, notes Dartmouth College economist William Fischel, have turned the Bay Area and the Valley into an “exclusionary region” inaccessible to all but the wealthy and highly gifted.

    Given the growing importance of the technology industry, it seems likely that this gated region will continue to thrive in the years ahead, albeit with a low level of new family formation, relatively few children and a limited middle class. It’s a model that some cites may wish to duplicate but few will be able to. Perhaps the most promising candidate to join this list is No. 15 Seattle, which also has experienced strong job growth, largely from technology and boasts a large population of college graduates.

    The Fading Big Enchiladas

    Perhaps the most glaring omissions at the top of our list are America’s three largest metropolitan areas: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Of the three, New York does best, but only well enough for 36th place, hardly what one would expect for America’s, and arguably the world’s, premier city.

    New York has high costs like San Francisco but a far more bifurcated economy and demographics. Wall Street may be approaching the end of an epic run, but overall incomes in New York have fallen 0.5% since 2010. Employment has expanded a respectable 7.3% over the past five years, roughly the national average, but the metro area has the highest rate of domestic out-migration in the country.

    Similar dynamics have lowered future prospects for Los Angeles and Chicago. Ranked 39th, Los Angeles has posted better job growth than New York at 10.2%, but its income losses were also more severe, down 3.8%. As in Gotham, the elites of Southern California in entertainment, real estate and technology may be thriving, but the vast majority are not doing so well, as manufacturing, construction and business services have lagged. Los Angeles’ population — more heavily Latino and African America — is also less well-educated, with only 34.8% of adults 25 to 44 holding bachelor’s degrees, a good 20 points less than their San Francisco-area competitors.

    Chicago, ranked 40th, appears to have worse prospects. For all its problems, Los Angeles still dominates entertainment, has the largest port in the country, close Pacific Rim connection and enjoys the finest weather on the continent. Chicago has none of those advantages, although it boasts a very attractive downtown. The region around the magnificent mile is not doing well, with low job and population growth, stagnant incomes and strong out-migration. Urban analyst Pete Saunders describes Chicago’s economy as “one-third San Francisco and two-thirds Detroit.” That seems more true than many Windy City boosters would like to admit.

    Future Of The Future

    Of course the future is not completely predicable and many things could change in the coming years. In the short run, as mentioned above, the energy boom towns will take a bit of a hit. Energy slowdowns could impact other cities with a concentration in this industry, notably Denver, Salt Lake and even Columbus, near Ohio’s big natural gas and oil reserves.

    But other factors suggest that these lower-cost cities will do well into the future. Columbus, Ohio, for example, may see its  job growth impacted, but the benefits of strong in-migration will linger, particularly the growing numbers of college-educated millennials who have headed to it and other more affordable Rust Belt metro areas in recent years.

    Ultimately we may see the emergence of two distinct urban futures. One will emerge in elite “gated” regions such as San Francisco, San Jose, and, perhaps in the near term, Seattle. These areas will dominate many key tech sectors, and will continue to leverage their well-educated populations. The other will be more along the Texas model, diversified economies driven by lower costs, particularly for housing, diversified economies and increasingly well-educated populations.

    Rather than being fundamentally incompatible, this enormous country should have room for both models. America needs its elite centers, but there also have to be cities for middle-class families. Each can claim a piece of the future.

    2016 Regions to Watch Index
    Rank Region (MSA) Score Children age 5-14, 2014 Job Growth, 2010-2015 Popltn Change, 2010-2014 Earnings growth, 2010-2015 Domestic Mig rate 2010-2014 Birth rate, 2010-2014 Bachelor’s degrees, Age 25-44, 2014 Unemplymt, Nov 15
    1 Austin 75.6 13.7% 19.1% 13.2% 1.5% 16.4 13.8 43.7% 3.3%
    2 Salt Lake City 66.3 16.2% 14.8% 6.0% 2.1% -0.1 16.9 31.2% 2.9%
    3 San Jose 65.6 13.1% 21.3% 6.3% 9.2% -1.8 13.1 53.5% 3.9%
    4 Denver 63.2 13.6% 15.0% 8.3% 0.8% 9.3 13.1 43.9% 3.2%
    5 Raleigh 63.1 14.7% 15.4% 10.0% -1.6% 11.0 12.9 49.0% 4.6%
    6 Houston 63.0 15.2% 15.2% 9.6% 3.8% 7.4 15.0 32.5% 4.9%
    7 Dallas 61.1 15.2% 15.0% 8.2% 0.7% 6.6 14.4 33.4% 4.0%
    8 San Antonio 58.6 14.5% 12.5% 8.7% 1.1% 9.9 14.1 27.6% 3.8%
    9 San Francisco 56.6 11.4% 15.7% 6.0% 7.8% 2.9 11.7 52.4% 3.9%
    10 Oklahoma City 56.2 13.9% 9.3% 6.7% 3.5% 6.8 14.5 30.4% 3.6%
    11 Nashville 56.1 13.3% 14.8% 7.3% 1.7% 8.9 13.1 37.8% 4.3%
    12 Charlotte 54.3 14.1% 15.4% 7.4% 0.9% 8.8 12.8 37.6% 5.1%
    13 Minneapolis 52.1 13.6% 8.7% 4.4% -0.6% 0.1 13.3 44.9% 2.7%
    14 Columbus 51.2 13.5% 10.8% 4.9% 0.7% 2.6 13.7 40.7% 3.9%
    15 Seattle 50.9 12.2% 13.8% 6.7% 4.0% 4.3 12.8 43.1% 4.9%
    16 Atlanta 50.8 14.6% 11.9% 6.2% 0.8% 3.5 13.3 38.2% 5.0%
    17 Orlando 49.1 12.6% 16.6% 8.8% -1.5% 8.2 12.1 31.0% 4.5%
    18 Grand Rapids 48.2 14.0% 20.0% 3.9% -2.2% 1.7 13.5 37.1% 5.2%
    19 Phoenix 48.1 14.2% 12.9% 7.1% -2.1% 6.5 13.7 29.3% 5.0%
    20 Indianapolis 47.9 14.3% 11.0% 4.4% -2.2% 2.1 13.8 36.4% 4.2%
    21 Washington 47.8 12.9% 5.3% 7.0% -3.4% 0.4 13.8 53.2% 4.1%
    22 Portland 47.5 12.7% 12.2% 5.5% 3.1% 5.1 12.1 38.9% 4.8%
    23 Kansas City 45.8 14.2% 6.9% 3.1% -0.3% -0.3 13.6 39.5% 3.9%
    24 San Diego 44.1 12.1% 9.6% 5.4% 1.9% 0.3 14.0 38.7% 4.8%
    25 Boston 43.1 11.4% 8.4% 3.9% 2.2% -0.5 11.2 54.1% 4.1%
    26 Cincinnati 39.4 13.6% 6.4% 1.6% 0.4% -2.1 12.9 37.0% 4.2%
    27 Louisville 39.3 13.0% 10.2% 2.8% -1.2% 1.5 12.5 31.7% 4.2%
    28 Riverside 39.0 15.0% 13.9% 5.1% -2.7% 1.6 14.1 18.8% 6.1%
    29 Jacksonville 39.0 12.7% 9.0% 5.5% -2.4% 5.4 12.7 28.2% 4.7%
    30 Richmond 38.3 12.7% 5.3% 4.3% -2.4% 3.1 12.0 38.1% 4.2%
    31 Detroit 37.5 12.9% 12.0% 0.0% -1.6% -4.6 11.6 33.9% 3.0%
    32 Sacramento 36.7 13.3% 8.3% 4.4% -0.6% 1.7 12.5 32.2% 5.5%
    33 Tampa 35.8 11.5% 10.2% 4.7% -1.6% 6.4 10.9 31.3% 4.6%
    34 Miami 35.0 11.4% 12.6% 6.5% -1.7% 0.9 11.4 31.3% 5.0%
    35 Milwaukee 35.0 13.3% 4.9% 1.0% -1.0% -3.4 12.8 38.3% 4.4%
    36 New York 35.0 12.1% 7.3% 2.7% -0.5% -6.3 12.7 44.8% 4.7%
    37 Baltimore 34.9 12.4% 6.8% 2.8% -1.2% -0.6 12.3 43.9% 5.3%
    38 Las Vegas 33.8 13.5% 13.6% 6.1% -6.5% 4.7 13.2 22.4% 6.3%
    39 Los Angeles 33.7 12.5% 10.2% 3.4% -1.8% -3.6 13.0 34.8% 5.3%
    40 Chicago 32.9 13.3% 6.5% 1.0% -0.1% -6.0 12.7 41.7% 5.4%
    41 Birmingham 31.9 13.1% 5.5% 1.4% -1.1% -0.6 12.9 32.3% 5.2%
    42 St. Louis 31.8 12.8% 4.2% 0.7% -0.4% -3.3 12.2 38.4% 4.6%
    43 Philadelphia 31.6 12.4% 3.8% 1.4% -1.7% -3.0 12.1 41.7% 4.6%
    44 New Orleans 31.2 12.6% 4.5% 5.2% -6.0% 4.7 12.7 33.4% 5.6%
    45 Cleveland 30.1 12.3% 5.2% -0.7% 0.3% -4.3 11.2 34.5% 3.7%
    46 Memphis 29.5 14.2% 3.6% 1.4% -0.8% -4.0 14.2 28.3% 6.1%
    47 Pittsburgh 28.8 10.8% 3.9% 0.0% 2.6% 0.4 10.1 42.2% 4.5%
    48 Virginia Beach 28.8 12.3% 1.0% 2.4% -1.2% -3.5 13.4 30.1% 4.6%
    49 Tucson 25.3 12.3% 3.7% 2.5% -3.9% 0.1 12.1 29.1% 5.3%
    50 Buffalo 25.0 11.6% 3.7% 0.1% 0.3% -2.3 10.6 36.8% 4.9%
    51 Hartford 24.5 11.9% 5.5% 0.2% -1.6% -5.7 10.0 41.9% 4.8%
    52 Rochester 23.9 11.9% 3.3% 0.3% -2.5% -3.9 10.8 36.6% 4.6%
    53 Providence 23.3 11.5% 5.1% 0.5% -0.4% -3.2 10.4 33.2% 4.9%

    Analysis by Mark Schill, Praxis Straetgy Group (mark@praxissg.com). The index incldues eight equally-weighted measures: share of population age 5-14, 5-year job growth, 5-year population change, 5-year real earnings growth, annual average domestic migration rate, annual average birth rate, share of young population with a bachelor’s degree, and current unemployment rate.

    This piece first appeared in Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is also executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is also author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Mark Schill is a community process consultant, economic strategist, and public policy researcher with Praxis Strategy Group.

    SaltLake City photo by Skyguy414.

  • The Uncelebrated Places Where America’s Farm Economy Is Thriving

    We consume their products every day but economists give them little attention, and perhaps not enough respect. Yet America’s agriculture sector is not only the country’s oldest economic pillar but still a vital one, accounting for some 3.75 million jobs — not only in the fields, but in factories, laboratories and distribution. That compares to about 4.3 million jobs in the tech sector (which we analyzed last month here). Net farm income totaled $108 billion in 2014, according to preliminary figures from the USDA, up 24% from 2004.

    This growth may not be impressive by Silicon Valley standards, but most farms and agribusinesses are likely to be with us longer than the latest social media darlings. Online crazes like FarmVille may come and go, but people always have to eat, and in the rest of world, many of them are eating more, and, as the old saying goes, “higher on the hog.” As the world’s leading exporter of agricultural products, the U.S. farm sector is capitalizing on that. The dollar value of U.S. agricultural exports rose to a record $152.5 billion in 2014, making up about 9% of total U.S. goods exports for the year. It’s one of a short list of sectors in which the United States has continued to consistently post a trade surplus — $42 billion last year.

    For 2013, the USDA estimated that agricultural exports supported about 1.1 million full-time private-sector jobs, which included 793,900 off the farm (in the food processing industry, the trade and transportation sector and in other supporting industries).

    There are many communities in America where agriculture is still a primary industry — even the dominant one. Working with Mark Schill, head of research at the Grand Forks, N.D.-based Praxis Strategy Group, we analyzed the performance of the nation’s largest 124 agriculture economies and put together a list of the strongest ones. We ranked the 124 metropolitan statistical areas based on short- and long-term job growth (2004-14 and 2012-14) in 68 agriculture-related industries (including food processing and manufacturing, wholesaling and farm equipment), average earnings in these communities, earnings growth, and the share of agribusiness in the local workforce.

    Short On Water, But Still In The Lead

    California may be struggling with a terrible drought, but its agricultural economy still thrives in the domestic and international markets. Six of our top 10 U.S. agricultural economies are in California, including No. 1 Madera, No. 3 Merced and No. 6 Bakersfield. These California regions have a similar profile: an outsized concentration in agribusiness, roughly 10 times the national average, reasonable growth, and low but rising wages.

    All these areas did poorly during the recession, and some, notably Merced, have served as exemplars of what The New York Times described as the “ruins of the American dream.” Many California farm communities, particularly those closer to the ultra-pricey Bay Area, hoped that lower land prices would bring skilled workers, and maybe jobs, to their towns from places like Silicon Valley.

    But if this aspiration to become a high-tech exurb has floundered in many places, the traditional agricultural economy has continued to roll along. Since 2004, agribusiness employment in our top-ranked agricultural economy, Madera, has surged 36.6%, which is impressive given that nationwide over the same time span, agribusiness employment has remained pretty much unchanged. Although pay for local agriculture-related jobs remains relatively low, wages have risen 15.7% over the past decade to $26,557 for the 14,700 people in this sector. (Note that farm owners on the whole are doing quite well. In 2013, the average farm household income was $118,373, according to the Congressional Research Service, 63% higher than the average U.S. household income of $72,641.)

    The key to California farming is dominance in specialized, high-value sectors. California accounts for a remarkable 80% of the world’s almonds, and that lucrative cash crop has been key to Madera’s prosperity — the county produced $623 million worth of almonds in 2013. The area is a big producer of milk and grapes as well, and has a thriving organic farm sector.

    Most of the other California leaders share a similar profile, but with sometimes different specializations. Grapes dominate No. 3 Bakersfield’s agricultural production, while Salinas (eighth), where we have both worked as consultants, describes itself as “the salad bowl of the world,” growing 70% of the nation’s lettuce. The area’s specialization in “fresh” has also made it a center of agricultural research and marketing, which provide higher-income opportunities than more traditional farm-based activities. The Salinas area  has also developed a thriving winery scene along the nearby Santa Lucia Mountains as well as a burgeoning number of organic farms production sector in recent years.

    Heartland Hotspots

    The other hot spot for the agriculture economy is the nation’s breadbasket. Our second-ranked agriculture hub, Decatur, Ill., grows the cash crops that built Middle America — corn and soybeans cover 80% of the area’s land. Due largely to the more mechanized nature of the area’s wet corn milling industry, and the large related industries, notably Archer Daniels Midland, the average local agribusiness worker makes $85,900 a year, almost three times the wages in Madera and other California farm areas.

    In fourth place is St. Joseph, a metropolitan statistical area that straddles the Missouri and Kansas border. The area has become a major center for food processing companies – particularly meat — as well as animal pharmaceuticals. It’s a major hub along the Kansas City Animal Health Corridor, where nearly a third of the $19 billion global animal health industry is concentrated.

    Other heartland growth areas include No. 11 Grand Island, Neb., No. 12 Evansville, Ind., and No. 14 Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Iowa. All these areas specialize in the agribusinesses that have long defined agriculture in the Midwest: cattle, grains and corn.

    Just two areas in our top 10 are outside California and the heartland. Yakima, Wash., markets itself as the “fruit bowl of the nation,” and accounts for roughly 60% of the nation’s apple production, as well as a major share of cherries and pears. About 30% of the local workforce is employed in agriculture or related businesses. Perhaps the most surprising entrant on our list is the only large metro area in the top 10: ninth place Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell. While agribusiness is not dominant in Atlanta, it makes the list due to high rankings in agribusiness wages ($74,932, 2nd) and wage growth (up 24.5% since 2004). This is driven by high-value sectors such as flavoring syrups and concentrates for the beverage industry (Coca-Cola is based in the city), farm machinery manufacturing, coffee and tea, and breweries. Its high ranking also reflects the vast sprawl of the area, which still also includes many large poultry producers, as well growers of rye, peanuts and pecans.

    The Agricultural Future

    Even as population growth slows in the United States and other developed nations, higher birth rates in emerging markets mean the world will require a 70% increase in food production by 2050. The shift of China alone from self-sufficiency in grains such as wheat, corn and soybeans to import dependence all but guarantees growth opportunities for American producers.

    To be sure, agricultural producers and the areas they are concentrated in face many challenges. Climate change is expected to impact the growing of certain crops. Severe water shortages, like the one California is experiencing, could threaten many agricultural areas throughout the traditionally arid West.

    These challenges will force food producers and processors to adapt. But what kind of farms will meet the challenge? It seems likely that most of the demand will be filled by large, often family-controlled concerns, as has been the trend for decades. As of 2012, some 66% of U.S. farm production by dollar value was accounted for by just 4% of the country’s farms. The century-long process of mechanization that has steadily reduced the numbers of farm workers has moderated in recent decades. The farms of the future are increasingly high-tech and run by highly skilled professionals and technicians.

    Simply put, large producers tend to be better suited to adapt to change, and particularly at marketing abroad. But at the same time, we can expect growth in more specialized fields, such as organic fruits, vegetables and meat as well as wine and specialty products, like olive oil. In fact two California areas known for artisanal production have logged considerable growth in recent years and placed highly on our list: Napa (13th) and Santa Maria-Santa Barbara (16th). In future years, we can expect that many other areas, even in the heartland, may look to these niches for profits.

    The notion of a stable peasantry, so important in a country like France, and the romantic attachment to farming among many urbanities, does not apply to most of rural America.

    As de Tocqueville noted in the first half of the 19th century, agriculture in America is a business. “Almost all farmers of the United States,” he observed,” combine industry with agriculture; most of them make agriculture a trade.”

    The idea of living on the land may impress old hippies, urban exiles and hipsters, but for most U.S. agricultural communities, the attachment comes from producing jobs, incomes and opportunities for local residents. This may not be as utopian an approach as some might like, but it has brought more food to more tables than any farming economy in the world.

    Rank Region (MSA) Score 2004 – 2014 %  Job Change 2012 – 2014 % Job Change 2014 Wages, Salaries, & Proprietor Earnings 2004-2014 Earnings Change 2014 Location Quotient 2014 Sector Jobs
    1 Madera, CA 63.3 36.6% 9.2%  $ 26,557 15.7% 11.5   14,730
    2 Decatur, IL 59.7 7.7% 1.8%  $ 85,907 13.8% 4.4     5,768
    3 Merced, CA 58.8 14.9% 10.2%  $ 33,383 3.9% 11.2   22,770
    4 St. Joseph, MO-KS 58.4 159.9% -0.1%  $ 44,800 11.9% 3.5     5,333
    5 Yakima, WA 56.9 27.9% 2.3%  $ 27,075 14.2% 12.0   34,537
    6 Bakersfield, CA 55.2 44.6% 10.7%  $ 26,594 3.2% 8.3   70,559
    7 Visalia-Porterville, CA 54.7 14.2% 2.9%  $ 30,536 12.0% 11.1   44,799
    8 Salinas, CA 53.8 17.2% 5.8%  $ 32,509 -0.9% 11.7   57,221
    9 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA 53.0 2.8% 1.0%  $ 74,932 24.5% 0.5   30,758
    10 Hanford-Corcoran, CA 52.3 0.7% 1.3%  $ 38,676 14.1% 9.3   11,559
    11 Grand Island, NE 51.4 32.3% -0.2%  $ 41,632 14.5% 7.0     8,158
    12 Evansville, IN-KY 50.6 21.2% 10.3%  $ 46,548 12.5% 1.3     5,041
    13 Napa, CA 50.0 15.5% 4.2%  $ 51,483 -4.8% 7.7   15,008
    14 Waterloo-Cedar Falls, IA 47.0 6.9% -0.9%  $ 62,298 5.1% 4.7   11,155
    15 Modesto, CA 46.6 -2.9% 1.7%  $ 42,215 10.3% 6.2   28,978
    16 Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA 46.1 23.2% 8.0%  $ 29,722 5.3% 4.5   24,148
    17 Chico, CA 46.0 19.6% 8.0%  $ 37,430 7.6% 2.6     5,485
    18 Yuma, AZ 45.6 -18.7% -1.6%  $ 27,921 22.7% 7.9   14,062
    19 Santa Rosa, CA 45.3 7.9% 7.6%  $ 41,952 3.5% 3.3   17,864
    20 Kennewick-Richland, WA 44.9 29.8% 1.2%  $ 29,603 8.2% 6.3   19,308
    21 Wenatchee, WA 44.4 10.2% 0.0%  $ 21,851 4.8% 10.1   14,404
    22 Gettysburg, PA 44.4 16.9% 2.2%  $ 37,146 2.9% 6.1     6,032
    23 Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, IA-IL 44.4 10.4% 0.8%  $ 61,311 3.5% 2.6   12,469
    24 Walla Walla, WA 43.9 2.5% -1.4%  $ 32,919 6.3% 8.6     6,907
    25 Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 43.6 27.1% 8.2%  $ 46,168 2.2% 0.4   27,025
    26 Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI 43.3 16.8% 6.7%  $ 37,050 9.5% 1.6   20,959
    27 Sioux Falls, SD 43.2 0.4% 4.2%  $ 43,743 11.9% 1.9     7,326
    28 Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 43.0 -15.2% -1.1%  $ 53,691 24.1% 0.7   11,775
    29 New Orleans-Metairie, LA 42.8 -8.0% 1.4%  $ 59,275 13.3% 0.5     6,968
    30 Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA 42.0 5.4% 3.9%  $ 46,590 7.3% 1.6   20,208
    31 Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA 41.9 2.0% 2.9%  $ 33,401 10.8% 3.9   11,167
    32 Canton-Massillon, OH 41.7 25.1% 8.6%  $ 40,484 -2.6% 1.4     6,009
    33 Fresno, CA 41.5 4.0% -0.3%  $ 29,168 7.6% 6.8   66,982
    34 Amarillo, TX 41.5 14.7% 4.2%  $ 38,692 6.1% 2.4     7,411
    35 Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA 41.4 5.4% 0.1%  $ 59,584 4.8% 1.5   13,798
    36 Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN 41.3 3.6% 7.8%  $ 49,291 -0.2% 0.6   16,821
    37 Kalamazoo-Portage, MI 41.1 6.4% 5.0%  $ 32,065 12.5% 1.9     7,031
    38 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 40.9 -1.5% 3.3%  $ 49,930 8.6% 0.8   39,300
    39 Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX 40.8 -7.3% 6.5%  $ 51,866 3.5% 0.3   21,060
    40 Birmingham-Hoover, AL 40.5 1.3% 10.9%  $ 38,714 0.3% 0.5     6,401
    41 San Diego-Carlsbad, CA 39.9 4.6% 10.1%  $ 33,886 3.3% 0.5   19,359
    42 Bellingham, WA 39.7 19.8% 4.5%  $ 30,171 6.5% 2.3     5,441
    43 Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA 39.4 26.2% 0.2%  $ 31,156 7.8% 3.5   30,982
    44 Appleton, WI 39.3 7.6% 0.5%  $ 43,222 5.0% 2.9     9,032
    45 Cedar Rapids, IA 39.1 7.1% 1.2%  $ 60,098 -4.5% 1.6     5,922
    46 Gainesville, GA 39.1 19.7% 4.2%  $ 34,848 -9.1% 5.1   10,420
    47 Columbus, OH 39.1 -15.7% 0.0%  $ 60,747 7.4% 0.6   14,524
    48 Peoria, IL 39.0 -5.6% -4.0%  $ 48,075 20.9% 1.1     5,132
    49 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 39.0 -5.0% 9.2%  $ 38,179 2.5% 0.4   11,750
    50 Grand Forks, ND-MN 38.9 -10.8% -4.2%  $ 39,268 19.3% 3.5     5,303
    51 Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ 38.8 -2.2% 6.5%  $ 37,495 7.5% 0.4   22,154
    52 San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles-Arroyo Grande, CA 38.6 26.0% -0.7%  $ 32,695 11.1% 2.5     7,682
    53 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 38.6 2.6% 7.1%  $ 34,455 4.8% 1.0   29,146
    54 Sioux City, IA-NE-SD 38.5 -4.7% -1.0%  $ 42,084 -1.9% 5.8   13,565
    55 Greeley, CO 37.6 11.8% 2.1%  $ 32,324 -3.4% 4.8   12,935
    56 Reading, PA 37.5 5.0% 5.8%  $ 38,675 -2.7% 1.9     8,553
    57 Fargo, ND-MN 37.5 3.9% -3.3%  $ 53,253 6.0% 1.9     6,805
    58 Joplin, MO 37.4 -21.2% -1.4%  $ 40,138 15.9% 2.4     5,003
    59 Yuba City, CA 37.2 -14.0% -3.1%  $ 32,690 13.9% 4.6     6,050
    60 Green Bay, WI 37.1 20.6% 3.3%  $ 36,437 -4.0% 2.8   12,150
    61 Stockton-Lodi, CA 37.1 -2.4% -2.4%  $ 35,861 8.1% 4.3   25,296
    62 Salem, OR 36.7 3.2% 3.2%  $ 26,949 1.6% 4.0   17,217
    63 Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI 36.7 -7.5% 2.2%  $ 51,126 2.0% 0.6   67,224
    64 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 36.7 0.6% 5.6%  $ 39,415 2.7% 0.3   16,642
    65 Wichita, KS 36.5 7.1% 3.1%  $ 51,114 -5.5% 0.9     7,260
    66 St. Cloud, MN 36.3 13.1% 3.6%  $ 34,545 -0.8% 2.2     5,877
    67 Richmond, VA 36.2 -5.2% 8.2%  $ 38,672 -2.3% 0.4     5,900
    68 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT 35.7 12.0% 4.8%  $ 37,100 0.6% 0.4     6,376
    69 Rochester, NY 35.3 5.7% 5.6%  $ 36,398 -3.1% 1.1   14,768
    70 Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC 35.2 -0.2% 3.3%  $ 40,743 2.3% 0.5   15,328
    71 Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD 35.1 13.4% 2.8%  $ 46,016 -3.7% 0.4   13,801
    72 Vineland-Bridgeton, NJ 34.8 34.2% -2.9%  $ 36,070 -4.2% 3.9     6,008
    73 El Centro, CA 34.6 -5.7% -9.0%  $ 27,952 10.9% 7.3   12,420
    74 Ogden-Clearfield, UT 34.5 33.6% 2.7%  $ 33,771 -2.4% 0.8     5,185
    75 Jackson, MS 34.4 -14.0% -1.2%  $ 36,223 16.1% 0.8     5,237
    76 Kansas City, MO-KS 33.8 -9.3% -0.9%  $ 50,538 2.8% 0.5   14,001
    77 Harrisonburg, VA 33.6 -10.4% 0.0%  $ 34,844 -4.3% 4.6     7,585
    78 Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN 33.5 12.4% -0.9%  $ 51,997 -4.9% 0.6   16,132
    79 Memphis, TN-MS-AR 33.5 -17.5% -2.3%  $ 55,272 3.0% 0.6     9,734
    80 Boise City, ID 33.3 -5.1% -1.8%  $ 36,627 8.3% 1.7   12,560
    81 San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA 32.9 -2.1% 2.8%  $ 44,038 -3.7% 0.4   21,369
    82 Fort Smith, AR-OK 32.6 -22.2% -2.3%  $ 34,447 8.0% 3.0     8,706
    83 Rochester, MN 32.5 9.2% -0.4%  $ 36,864 -1.1% 1.8     5,470
    84 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 32.5 10.4% -4.9%  $ 39,201 12.2% 0.5   11,860
    85 Las Cruces, NM 32.4 -12.9% -1.1%  $ 23,719 12.3% 2.7     5,506
    86 Salt Lake City, UT 32.3 -1.1% -0.1%  $ 39,698 4.4% 0.3     6,090
    87 Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA 32.2 -19.9% -2.2%  $ 47,083 5.2% 0.9     7,431
    88 Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO 31.8 -2.2% 2.6%  $ 48,162 -9.4% 0.4   14,651
    89 Sacramento–Roseville–Arden-Arcade, CA 31.6 9.9% 1.0%  $ 38,510 -3.0% 0.7   16,298
    90 Lancaster, PA 31.2 -18.0% -2.3%  $ 45,489 -2.5% 2.4   15,195
    91 Goldsboro, NC 30.9 -6.0% -0.2%  $ 31,551 -6.1% 3.9     5,053
    92 Knoxville, TN 30.8 1.2% -0.9%  $ 36,956 2.9% 0.6     5,745
    93 Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO 30.7 -14.2% -2.8%  $ 33,593 3.0% 3.0   17,130
    94 Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI 30.7 -13.6% 3.3%  $ 43,829 -8.4% 0.6   14,113
    95 Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI 30.0 -7.5% 4.3%  $ 33,166 -3.8% 0.2   10,978
    96 Providence-Warwick, RI-MA 30.0 -5.5% 0.7%  $ 33,580 2.7% 0.3     6,187
    97 Columbia, SC 29.5 0.0% 0.8%  $ 32,795 -1.6% 0.9     8,184
    98 Urban Honolulu, HI 29.5 -6.3% 2.8%  $ 29,767 -1.1% 0.6     7,576
    99 York-Hanover, PA 29.5 -1.9% -2.3%  $ 43,359 -4.7% 1.4     6,338
    100 St. Louis, MO-IL 29.3 -19.6% -7.4%  $ 55,033 4.5% 0.6   20,054
    101 New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA 29.3 0.9% 2.0%  $ 42,074 -9.8% 0.3   63,059
    102 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL 29.1 -0.7% 1.0%  $ 32,275 -1.1% 0.5   31,740
    103 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 29.0 -26.5% -4.2%  $ 45,284 6.8% 0.4     8,457
    104 Cleveland-Elyria, OH 28.7 -7.1% 2.1%  $ 35,946 -5.8% 0.5   13,914
    105 Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 27.4 3.0% -3.8%  $ 39,609 -1.3% 0.5   10,847
    106 Lexington-Fayette, KY 27.3 -15.2% -6.2%  $ 32,557 9.7% 1.4     9,763
    107 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 27.3 -15.0% -0.8%  $ 32,745 0.5% 0.7   26,357
    108 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 26.9 -6.9% 0.2%  $ 40,376 -9.6% 0.5   38,965
    109 Pittsburgh, PA 26.7 -20.2% 0.1%  $ 34,121 -0.5% 0.3     7,765
    110 Raleigh, NC 26.4 -17.6% 1.0%  $ 40,219 -9.4% 0.4     6,022
    111 Oklahoma City, OK 26.3 -12.3% -5.2%  $ 37,948 4.6% 0.4     6,099
    112 Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL 25.6 -14.9% -8.7%  $ 43,105 -0.4% 2.2   11,733
    113 Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL 25.2 -4.8% -0.2%  $ 33,141 -7.5% 0.4   12,851
    114 Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls, NY 25.1 -21.6% -1.4%  $ 41,848 -8.4% 0.6     7,851
    115 Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island, FL 24.9 -22.9% -8.2%  $ 25,014 13.7% 1.9     6,572
    116 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 24.7 -9.1% 0.0%  $ 47,118 -18.2% 0.3   28,697
    117 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 24.6 -19.1% -3.7%  $ 43,853 -5.8% 0.4   59,217
    118 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 23.6 -14.5% 1.3%  $ 26,027 -7.7% 0.6   20,043
    119 Chattanooga, TN-GA 22.8 -18.2% -8.1%  $ 42,812 -2.2% 0.9     5,466
    120 Salisbury, MD-DE 22.3 -13.6% -9.3%  $ 32,913 -2.2% 2.7   10,914
    121 McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX 22.0 -38.2% -11.7%  $ 26,476 20.1% 1.1     7,330
    122 North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL 20.7 -5.3% -4.6%  $ 32,039 -11.5% 1.3     9,269
    123 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 18.9 -19.7% -3.8%  $ 31,162 -8.9% 0.1   10,945
    124 Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ 13.2 -16.4% -10.8%  $ 49,598 -24.4% 0.6     5,176

     

    To determine the top regions for agribusiness, Mark Schill of Praxis Strategy Group, mark@praxissg.com, examined employment data in 68 ag- and food production-related industries, including crop and animal production. Only metropolitan areas with at least 5,000 total jobs in the 68 industries are included in the analysis. The five measures are equally-weighted. Location quotient is the local share of jobs in agribusiness divided by the national share in the same industry group. Data is from Economic Modeling Specialists, Intl (EMSI).

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is also executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is also author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.  He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

    Mark Schill is a community process consultant, economic strategist, and public policy researcher with Praxis Strategy Group.

  • The Valley And The Upstarts: The Cities Creating The Most Tech Jobs

    No industry generates more hype, and hope, than technology. From 2004 to 2014, the number of tech-related jobs in the United States expanded 31%, faster than other high-growth sectors like health care and business services. In the wider category of STEM-related jobs (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), employment grew 11.4% over the same period, compared to 4.5% for other jobs. The Commerce Department projects that growth in STEM employment will continue to outpace the rest of the economy through 2018.

    But all the new tech jobs have not been evenly distributed across the country. To determine which areas are benefiting the most from the current tech boom, Mark Schill, research director at Praxis Strategy Group, analyzed employment data from the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan statistical areas from 2004 to 2014. He looked at the change in employment over that timespan in companies in industries we associate with technology, such as software, engineering and computer programming services. (Note that this includes everyone at these companies, such as non-tech employees like janitors and receptionists). He also looked at the change in the numbers of workers in other industries who are classified as having STEM occupations (science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related jobs). This captures the many tech workers who are employed in businesses that at first glance may not seem to have anything to do with technology at all. For instance just 7% of the nation’s 1.5 million software developers and programmers work at software firms — the vast majority are employed in industries as disparate as manufacturing, finance, and business services.

    Our list features some well-known outperformers, but also some surprising metro areas usually not associated with venture capital and Silicon Valley. We also found that some high-profile metro areas that like to tout themselves as the “next Silicon Valley” are actually at best the middle of the pack in terms of tech and STEM job growth.

    The Strongest Engines

    At the top of our list is a group of cities that have long been identified with tech growth. Our No. 1 city, Austin, Texas, boasts the strongest expansion in tech sector employment of any of the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan areas from 2004 to 2014, 73.9%,  as well as 36.4% growth in STEM jobs, the fourth-highest growth rate in the country. Coming in a close second is Raleigh, N.C.,  part of the renowned Research Triangle region, home to outposts of multinationals like Bayer, BASF, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM and Cisco. The Raleigh metro area posted a 39% increase in STEM jobs from 2004-14, the fastest growth in the nation, albeit from a smaller base than many of the other biggest metro areas.

    However, the Bay Area continues to reign as the tech center with the most momentum. San Jose, which covers most of Silicon Valley, ranks third with 70.2% growth in tech sector employment since 2004 and a hefty 25.8% increase in STEM employment. The San Francisco metro area, which includes San Mateo to the south, ranks fifth with a 67.4% jump in tech industry employment as well as a STEM jobs increase of 27.5%.

    There may be more tech industry employees and workers in STEM occupations in the New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles metro areas, but San Jose has the strongest concentration of tech horsepower in the nation, with by far the highest per capita concentration of people in engineering professions. San Jose’s tech industry is responsible for 14.1% of all jobs, almost five times the national average of 2.9%. The share of STEM workers is 15.5% of its total workforce, three times the 5.0% proportion in the overall U.S. population. Both figures are easily the highest in the nation. San Francisco clocks in at second nationally with 7.6% of its jobs in tech industries and is fifth in STEM representation, at 8.7% of all workers, behind San Jose, the nation’s capital, Seattle, and our No. 1 city, Austin.

    Silicon Valley’s thick concentration of titans like Intel, Apple, Oracle, Google and Facebook has created an innovative ecosystem, which, as Pando Daily’s Michael Carney describes, supports a “systematic irrationality and a feedback loop” that encourages many tech entrepreneurs to turn down the easy early exit of selling out to a bigger company and make the commitment to grind for a decade or more in the hopes of joining the afore-mentioned standouts as a massive success.

    No other area apart from Seattle (No. 7 on our list) comes close in this regard to nurturing tech giants. The success of the Bay Area and Valley also attracts outsiders who want to be close to the action, including foreign players like Samsung, and old economy stalwarts that need a tech infusion like Wal-Mart.

    The Surprise Tech Upstarts

    Some of the others in our top 10 are not as renowned as tech centers, but have experienced rapid growth over the past decade. The biggest surprise may be No. 4 Houston, which enjoyed a 42.3% expansion of jobs in tech industries and a big 37.8% boost in STEM jobs from 2004-14. Much of the growth was in the now sputtering energy industry, but also medical-related technology, which continues to grow rapidly. Houston is the home to the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest concentration of medical facilities. It also ranks second to San Jose in engineers per capita.

    The Mountain West metropolises of Salt Lake City (sixth) and Denver (11th) also have posted impressive growth, and now boast considerably higher share of tech and STEM workers in their populations than the national average; in Salt Lake City 5.9 percent of jobs are in tech industries and 4.1% are in STEM. Denver is even more impressive with 7.3% of jobs in tech industries and 5.1% working in STEM.  Salt Lake City’s gains are linked to a continued migration of tech firms, largely from Silicon Valley, whereas Denver is making waves as a start-up incubator.

    The other top cities on our growth list all tend to be emerging tech centers. These include No. 8 Nashville, where strong growth in data centers and systems design firms is at least partially tied to its strength in the health sector, No. 9 Jacksonville, driven by IT and computer programming services firms, and, perhaps most surprising, No. 10 Memphis, whose 35% tech growth since 2012 is due mostly to significant recent growth in engineering services. However, the tech sectors in these cities are still very small — Memphis had only 7,800 tech industry workers last year — and all three still trail the national average for the share of tech workers in the population.

    More Hat Than Cattle?

    Some journalists and pundits believe tech is moving from its suburban roots and towards dense, large cities. And there’s some truth to the fact that the social media boom, and some tech-driven services, appeal naturally to the same creative and culturally minded workforce concentrated in core cities. But this shift is not too evident in terms of job creation. High-tech growth in city centers may have more to do with tech sector expansion in general occurring in every type of geography.

    Suburban Silicon Valley, for example, has nearly twice the concentration of tech jobs as San Francisco; even amidst the social media boom, the Valley since 2012 has greatly outpaced the City and its immediate suburbs in terms of both new tech and STEM employment. The largest tech projects going up in the Bay Area — new headquarters for Google, LinkedIn and Apple – are being built in the Valley, not the city.

    Unlike San Francisco, cities located far from tech centers have not done nearly as well as often reported. Chicago has been desperate to portray itself as a major tech center, developing elaborate facilities for companies, while promoting its own high-tech icon, Groupon, and crowing over the high-profile names its lured to open up offices in the city, like Google. Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has even proposed expanded bike lanes as part of his plan to lure tech-savvy members of the “creative class” to his city.

    Yet despite all the noise, Chicago ranked a mediocre 33rd on our growth list, with 20.3% tech industry employment growth from 2004-14 and a mere 3.8% growth in STEM jobs. Both numbers are below the national average, as is the region’s percentage of employees in tech and STEM.

    How about Los Angeles, with its fabulous weather, elite universities (Caltech, University of Southern California, UCLA, Cal Poly Pomona and Harvey Mudd College) and close ties to the creative engine of Hollywood? Local boosters like to claim that the metro area is undergoing a full-scale “tech boom” focused on the west side in its so-called “Silicon Beach.” To be sure, the region still boasts the second largest pool of STEM workers in the country, in part due to its legacy of manufacturing, led by its shrunken but still sizable aerospace industry (63,000 jobs, down by 90,000 since the end of the Cold War). But Los Angeles’ large STEM numbers are to a great degree a function of the massive population of the metro area – the percentage of STEM employees in the workforce is 4.9%, a hair below the national average of 5%, while 2.5% of its workforce is in tech industries, trailing the national average of 2.9%. Los Angeles lands a poor 38th on our growth list, with an 18.7% expansion in tech industry jobs since 2004 and a 4% increase in STEM jobs, a shade below the national average of 4.2%.

    But perhaps the biggest surprise is New York, whose boosters are now claiming it to be the No. 2 tech center in the nation and the Valley’s chief rival. However, on our job growth list New York sits in a mediocre 35th place, with 24.3% growth in tech industry employment over the past 10 years, and only 4% in the last two. In STEM, New York still has the largest number of jobs of any metro area in the nation at 428,000 as of 2014, but that’s up a paltry 2.7% since 2004, and, as in the case of L.A., is a function of its large population. The percentage of STEM employees in the local workforce falls short of the national average at 4.4%. New York has gained about 51,000 technology industry jobs since 2004 and 12,000 since 2012, giving it a total of roughly 265,000 tech jobs. But that’s some 70,000 fewer than the Bay Area, an economy about one third the size of New York’s.

    Critically, most New York “tech” seems more linked to media than actual physical products, essentially replacing many of its old media jobs with newer ones. Part of the problem for New York is that it’s profoundly weak in engineering talent, ranking 78th out of 85 metropolitan areas in engineers per capita.

    The Bay Area Versus The Rest

    The current social media bubble will surely pop, but as Michael S. Malone and others have noted, the Bay Area’s preeminence will likely continue, fueled by its unique concentration of engineers, entrepreneurs, and risk capital. Instead of losing out to New York, Silicon Valley and San Francisco are luring many top performers from Wall Street. Google alone has 1,200 employees who formerly worked for large U.S. investment banks, and migration from the Big Apple to California is now at its highest level since 2006.

    In the coming years the engineering-centered Valley seems better positioned to seize on the challenges posed by the “Internet of things,” including systems for heating and cooling and autonomous cars, as well as biotechnology. In the long run, the Valley’s hegemony is threatened not by any one place, but by several that offer significant technical expertise, with far lower housing costs. San Francisco is already by far the nation’s least affordable metro area. Only 11% of residents making the median annual income can afford to buy a home, according to the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index – and the median income is in the San Francisco area is a hefty $100,400. The Valley is not far behind at 21.8%. The high prices throughout the Bay Area has become a concern of tech executives, who fear they will have troubles attracting more experienced engineers and managers.

    No matter the headlines, the reality is that future tech growth is more likely to be created by the less sexy business services sectors than by Internet media or software publishers. In the last decade three often-ignored industries — engineering services, systems design and custom programming – added nearly 750,000 jobs, while software providers and Internet properties added less than 200,000. The decentralizing force of these boring sectors is what’s driving growth in the second- and third-tier tech cities.

    But despite these trends, don’t expect the landscape of American technology, particularly at the high end, to change dramatically in the near future. Inertia is a powerful force, as is the enormous concentration of venture funds and expertise around the Bay Area. But if no one area can hope to challenge Silicon Valley’s lead position, it is likely tech growth will continue to flow to other areas that could collectively take the tech capital of the world down a notch or two.

    2015 Metropolitan Tech-STEM Growth Index
    Rank Region (MSA) Score 2004-2014 Tech Industry Growth 2012-2014 Tech Industry Growth 2014 Tech Industry LQ 2004-2014 STEM Occuptn Growth 2012-2014 STEM Occuptn Growth 2014 STEM Occuptn LQ
    1 Austin 87.4 73.9% 21.8% 1.90 36.4% 11.2% 1.77
    2 Raleigh, NC 85.7 62.3% 17.0% 2.23 39.0% 13.4% 1.63
    3 San Jose 78.1 70.2% 19.6% 4.92 25.8% 10.2% 3.11
    4 Houston 77.8 42.3% 18.5% 1.26 37.8% 12.3% 1.30
    5 San Francisco 70.5 67.4% 13.0% 2.64 27.5% 7.9% 1.74
    6 Salt Lake City, UT 70.0 62.4% 11.0% 1.44 33.3% 7.5% 1.17
    7 Seattle 66.5 58.3% 7.4% 2.34 37.6% 6.2% 1.94
    8 Nashville 65.3 68.6% 15.1% 0.68 14.7% 7.6% 0.80
    9 Jacksonville, FL 62.7 58.4% 13.5% 0.87 16.0% 8.2% 0.84
    10 Memphis, TN 61.0 35.3% 34.9% 0.41 5.0% 7.4% 0.63
    11 Denver 56.4 34.5% 10.1% 1.79 24.4% 7.8% 1.47
    12 Indianapolis 55.9 52.2% 8.2% 0.88 15.0% 7.4% 1.04
    13 Charlotte, NC 54.8 36.4% 8.7% 0.81 23.8% 7.1% 0.96
    14 Phoenix 54.1 51.1% 13.3% 0.90 13.9% 5.1% 1.10
    15 Kansas City, MO 54.0 46.2% 11.2% 1.49 16.5% 6.0% 1.11
    16 Portland, OR 52.5 33.2% 9.6% 1.10 19.8% 7.2% 1.31
    17 San Antonio 52.1 43.5% 4.3% 0.92 26.6% 4.8% 0.82
    18 Dallas 52.1 43.9% 6.0% 1.11 22.0% 5.4% 1.20
    19 Boston, MA 50.9 43.4% 9.9% 2.28 16.0% 5.2% 1.59
    20 Sacramento 47.5 47.8% 6.7% 0.94 11.6% 4.7% 1.36
    21 Grand Rapids 46.7 26.4% 13.2% 0.50 7.1% 7.6% 0.95
    22 Louisville, KY 46.5 23.7% 10.8% 0.57 16.4% 6.0% 0.74
    23 San Diego 45.4 33.8% 7.2% 1.81 16.0% 4.7% 1.44
    24 Las Vegas 45.1 13.6% 15.0% 0.57 8.8% 8.0% 0.47
    25 Tampa 43.7 26.8% 10.7% 0.99 4.2% 7.4% 0.91
    26 Orlando 42.9 18.3% 8.7% 0.96 13.9% 6.4% 0.82
    27 Baltimore 40.0 30.4% 5.2% 1.55 16.6% 2.6% 1.42
    28 Atlanta 38.0 19.1% 5.7% 1.22 10.2% 5.4% 1.10
    29 Minneapolis 37.8 17.8% 7.7% 1.07 11.0% 4.6% 1.24
    30 Cincinnati, OH 37.0 20.6% 8.7% 0.81 8.1% 4.0% 1.04
    31 Pittsburgh, PA 35.8 25.2% 3.1% 1.06 14.4% 2.5% 1.06
    32 Miami 35.0 3.6% 13.3% 0.64 -1.0% 7.3% 0.62
    33 Chicago, IL 34.3 20.3% 8.8% 0.91 3.7% 3.8% 0.93
    34 Richmond, VA 32.4 33.9% -2.9% 0.79 9.7% 2.2% 1.00
    35 New York 32.2 24.3% 4.7% 0.96 5.0% 2.7% 0.89
    36 Cleveland 32.1 21.7% 5.3% 0.74 4.1% 3.2% 0.91
    37 Hartford 31.9 30.7% 4.9% 0.89 4.9% 1.2% 1.12
    38 Los Angeles 31.1 18.7% 4.9% 0.86 2.1% 4.0% 0.99
    39 Detroit 29.2 6.2% 8.5% 1.97 -2.3% 5.4% 1.44
    40 Columbus, OH 27.9 9.5% 3.1% 1.07 9.4% 2.3% 1.19
    41 Riverside 25.5 12.8% 0.1% 0.33 4.7% 2.7% 0.53
    42 Providence 24.9 13.1% 1.3% 0.76 0.5% 3.1% 0.88
    43 New Orleans 24.8 21.6% 8.0% 0.68 -11.1% 2.4% 0.68
    44 Oklahoma City, OK 23.9 0.4% -4.8% 0.49 15.5% 2.6% 0.96
    45 Buffalo 23.2 26.3% -2.4% 0.80 3.1% -0.1% 0.85
    46 Birmingham 22.7 3.3% 2.7% 0.65 1.7% 2.8% 0.82
    47 St. Louis, MO 21.9 9.5% -3.5% 0.89 3.1% 2.9% 1.00
    48 Philadelphia, PA 21.6 10.0% 2.4% 1.17 0.6% 1.2% 1.09
    49 Rochester, NY 19.9 12.0% 8.1% 0.74 -4.5% -0.8% 1.06
    50 Washington, DC 16.4 7.3% -4.7% 2.59 10.8% -2.0% 2.07
    51 Milwaukee 16.3 0.1% -2.8% 0.76 1.5% 1.6% 0.99
    52 Virginia Beach 8.0 -2.2% -7.3% 1.04 1.5% -1.5% 1.05

    To determine the metro areas that are generating the most tech jobs, Mark Schill of Praxis Strategy Group,  mark@praxissg.com, examined employment data in two different categories. Half our ranking is based on changes in employment at companies in high-technology industries, such as software and engineering. (This includes all workers at these companies, some of whom, like janitors or receptionists, do not perform tech functions). Half is based on changes in the number of workers classified as being in STEM occupations, which captures tech workers who are employed in all industries, including those not primarily associated with technology, such as finance or business services. We ranked the 52 largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas by the growth in tech and STEM employment from 2004 to 2014, as well as for their more near-term growth from 2012 to 2014 to give credit for current momentum.

    This piece originally appeared at Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is also executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is also author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.  He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

    Mark Schill is a community process consultant, economic strategist, and public policy researcher with Praxis Strategy Group.

    Photo “Sixth Street Austin” by Larry D. Moore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

  • America’s Smartest Cities

    In this difficult recovery, many of the strongest local economies have been those with a high share of educated people in their workforce, particularly areas where technology companies and other knowledge-based industries are growing most rapidly.

    To determine the metro areas that are gaining brainpower in the 21stCentury, we scored the nation’s 380 metropolitan statistical areas based on three criteria. We started with the growth rate in the number of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree from 2000 through 2013 (25% weighting in final score). But since the places that post the highest growth rates tend to be those starting with low levels of educational attainment, we gave greater weight to the percentage point increase in the share of the population that is college-educated over that span (50%), and we factored in the share of educated people in the population in 2013 (25%). We also separated out results for the 51 MSAs with over a million residents.

    For the most part, the top 10 on our list of the 51 largest metro areas is dominated by places with large concentrations of colleges, and those that long ago made the transition from industrial to information-based economies.

    In the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metro area, 44.8% of the population has bachelor’s degrees or above, the fourth-highest concentration of brainpower in the nation, up 7.8 percentage points since 2000 on the strength of a 32.2% jump in its college-educated population. That places Boston No. 1 on our large cities list.

    It’s followed in second place by Pittsburgh, which logged the largest percentage point increase since 2000 in the proportion of its population that is college-educated, 8.8 points, to 32.2%, on the strength of 37.3% growth in raw numbers.

    Perhaps the biggest driver in increasing the concentration of educated people in a population lies in the composition of local industry. Silicon Valley has done very well, making heavy additions to an already high concentration of educated residents. The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area places third on our list with a population in which 46.7% hold a bachelor’s degree or above, the second highest share in the nation, a 6.8 percentage point jump over 2000. Its urban annex, San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, places eighth, with a population that is 45.2% college-educated, an increase of 6.4 percentage points. To some extent, this reflects the area’s deindustrialization and high price structure; you do not want to come to the Bay Area today without a high-paying job requiring a good college degree if you expect to live a middle-class lifestyle.

    Another big employer of educated people is government, and with Washington in expansion mode over the past decade, it’s no surprise that our nation’s capital features in the top 10 — twice. The proportion of the population of Washington-Alexandria-Arlington that is college-educated has risen 6.2 points to 48.7%, the highest concentration in the nation, on the back of a 45% increase in the raw numbers. It ranks fifth on our list, followed in sixth place by neighboring Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Md.

    The Small Smart Set

    Looking at the full set of the nation’s 380 metropolitan areas, the 51 biggest added far more people to their college-educated populations than the other 329 — a net 12 million since 2000, compared to 4.8 million for the smaller metro areas. But the growth rates were actually fairly similar, 43% vs. 41%, which highlights that the largest cities are no longer the only places attracting educated workers.

    Some of the most dramatic growth is taking place in two kinds of small-scale geographies: college towns and what might be best described as amenity regions. At the turn of the millennium, college towns already had a decent base of educated people; now they seem able to attract and nurture tech companies as well. This is the case for the second-ranked metro area on our overall list of all 380: Bloomington, Indiana. Home to Indiana University, the metro area has logged a dramatic 11.7 percentage point increase in the proportion of its population that is college educated since 2000. The share of its population with BAs is now 40.6%, putting it in range of places like Boston and the Bay Area.

    Much the same pattern can be seen in several college towns, including No. 4 Auburn-Opelika, Ala.; Hattiesburg, Miss. (sixth); Lawrence, Kan. (seventh), and Burlington, Vt. (10th). The other big growth areas are attractive small towns that have lured many down-shifting, but often well educated, boomers. Placing first on our overall list is St. George, Utah — its college-educated population increased by 167% from 2000 through 2013, making for a hefty 11.1 percentage point jump in the proportion of its population that’s college educated to 32.0%. Other areas with similar patterns of growth include Ocean City, N.J. (third), Wilmington, N.C. (fifth), Asheville, N.C. (eighth), and Redmond-Bend, Ore. (ninth).

    Looking Forward

    The rapid growth in the concentration of residents with bachelor’s degrees in these smaller cities suggests that the geography of brainpower is likely to change in the years ahead. For decades the Southeast and Midwest have lagged behind the Northeast and the West Coast in education, but this gap is closing somewhat, at least in the smaller cities. Save Burlington, Vt., not one small metro area in the Northeast or California ranked within the top 65 of our overall list.

    A plethora of places in the Southeast dot the top part of our overall list: in addition to the previously mentioned Wilmington and Asheville, Durham-Chapel Hill (15th); Charleston-North Charleston, S.C. (17th); and Savannah, Ga. (20th). The Intermountain West is well represented as well in addition to St. George, with Boulder, Colo., in 13th place, and Provo-Orem, Utah, in 22nd. These areas are all likely to emerge as top tech and professional centers as their ranks of educated workers swell.

    An equally compelling view of the future would be to concentrate on the locations of relatively recent college graduates. A recent study by Richey Piiparinen and Jim Russell for Cleveland State University looked at college-educated people between the ages of 25 and 34 in 2011-13. It found that many of the metro areas with the most rapid growth of this population were in the South, led by Nashville, Tenn., Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Fla.; and Austin, Texas, all of which experienced growth in this cohort of between 15% and 25%.

    More surprising, however, was the strong growth in some Rust Belt cities, including Cleveland-Elyria (+20%), and Pittsburgh (12%). Piiparinen and Russell suggest this is, in part, due to the lower costs in these regions, which allow young people to live far better than they would in a pricier city on either coast. Clearly high costs could shift the nature of future educated migration. It already has caused millennial populations to stagnate in some traditional magnet cities for the educated, such as New York and San Francisco, and actually drop in the core areas of Chicago and Portland. Another factor could be the availability of high-paying jobs; Portland, for example, has an inordinate proportion of college-educated young residents working at lower wages than the national average. In contrast Houston, where high-paying jobs are being created at a healthy clip, the young educated cohort grew five times as fast.

    Of course many factors could shift this geography of education in the years ahead. An extended slide in oil prices, for example, could slow growth in places like Houston and Dallas, while a shift in the terrain of social media could have a devastating effect on the Bay Area. Yet looking ahead, it’s clear that the map of America’s brainpower is likely to continue changing. The leaders, particularly talent-producers such as Boston, should remain at the top for years to come, but other regions — notably the South, the Intermountain West and perhaps also the Rust Belt — could be making bigger gains in the years ahead.

    Educated Metropolitan Area Rankings
    Rank Rank in Size Group Region (MSA) Size Score 2013 share 2000-2013 Growth 2000-2013 point change
    1 1 St. George, UT S 72.0 32.0% 167.3% 11.1%
    2 2 Bloomington, IN S 69.7 40.6% 27.6% 11.7%
    3 3 Ocean City, NJ S 67.6 33.7% 48.7% 11.7%
    4 4 Auburn-Opelika, AL S 65.6 37.9% 90.0% 10.0%
    5 1 Wilmington, NC M 62.5 34.6% 37.6% 10.4%
    6 5 Hattiesburg, MS S 62.1 32.6% 77.7% 10.0%
    7 6 Lawrence, KS S 60.6 50.4% 50.4% 7.7%
    8 2 Asheville, NC M 60.2 32.7% 71.8% 9.6%
    9 7 Bend-Redmond, OR S 60.1 33.8% 104.6% 8.9%
    10 8 Burlington-South Burlington, VT S 59.2 43.3% 39.8% 8.4%
    11 9 Bloomington, IL S 58.1 41.8% 48.0% 8.2%
    12 1 Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH L 57.1 44.8% 32.2% 7.8%
    13 3 Boulder, CO M 56.8 58.5% 20.1% 6.1%
    14 10 Iowa City, IA S 55.2 48.6% 45.2% 6.6%
    15 4 Durham-Chapel Hill, NC M 54.7 45.5% 53.1% 6.8%
    16 2 Pittsburgh, PA L 54.7 32.2% 37.3% 8.8%
    17 5 Charleston-North Charleston, SC M 54.7 33.0% 81.5% 8.0%
    18 3 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA L 54.2 46.7% 32.9% 6.8%
    19 4 Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI L 54.0 30.6% 92.7% 7.9%
    20 6 Savannah, GA M 53.9 31.3% 73.2% 8.1%
    21 5 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV L 53.3 48.7% 44.9% 6.2%
    22 7 Provo-Orem, UT M 52.9 37.7% 94.5% 6.7%
    23 11 Hilton Head Island-Bluffton-Beaufort, SC S 52.6 36.7% 83.4% 6.9%
    24 6 Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD L 52.6 36.8% 40.8% 7.6%
    25 7 Raleigh, NC L 52.6 43.7% 78.7% 6.1%
    26 12 Missoula, MT S 52.5 39.8% 48.8% 7.0%
    27 8 Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA M 52.4 35.4% 59.8% 7.4%
    28 9 Ann Arbor, MI M 51.4 53.5% 23.7% 5.4%
    29 8 San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA L 51.3 45.2% 30.8% 6.4%
    30 9 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA L 50.9 39.4% 47.9% 6.7%
    31 10 New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA L 50.9 37.4% 37.9% 7.1%
    32 11 St. Louis, MO-IL L 50.8 32.5% 41.9% 7.7%
    33 13 Sioux Falls, SD S 50.6 32.3% 73.0% 7.2%
    34 10 Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO M 50.4 28.2% 92.3% 7.4%
    35 14 Manhattan, KS S 50.3 37.8% 13.0% 7.4%
    36 15 Great Falls, MT S 50.2 29.4% 45.5% 7.9%
    37 12 Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO L 49.4 40.3% 52.2% 6.1%
    38 11 Trenton, NJ M 49.0 40.4% 27.7% 6.4%
    39 16 Logan, UT-ID S 48.8 35.9% 66.6% 6.3%
    40 17 Corvallis, OR S 48.7 52.2% 26.1% 4.8%
    41 18 Hinesville, GA S 48.4 20.9% 101.1% 7.7%
    42 13 Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN L 48.4 32.3% 71.9% 6.6%
    43 14 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD L 48.2 34.6% 36.3% 6.9%
    44 19 California-Lexington Park, MD S 48.1 29.5% 69.3% 7.0%
    45 15 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI L 48.1 39.3% 43.7% 6.1%
    46 12 Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT M 48.0 45.5% 21.5% 5.6%
    47 13 Portland-South Portland, ME M 47.9 35.8% 37.2% 6.6%
    48 20 Columbia, MO S 47.7 45.3% 35.0% 5.3%
    49 14 Madison, WI M 47.6 42.4% 48.5% 5.5%
    50 16 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA L 47.4 35.1% 53.9% 6.3%
    51 15 Salisbury, MD-DE M 46.9 22.5% 344.7% 3.0%
    52 21 Morgantown, WV S 46.7 32.5% 55.5% 6.4%
    53 17 Austin-Round Rock, TX L 46.3 41.5% 79.8% 4.8%
    54 16 Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA M 46.3 33.4% 48.0% 6.4%
    55 22 Fargo, ND-MN S 46.3 35.3% 56.7% 5.9%
    56 23 Sumter, SC S 46.2 23.3% 58.9% 7.5%
    57 24 State College, PA S 46.1 41.7% 36.0% 5.4%
    58 25 Elizabethtown-Fort Knox, KY S 46.1 21.6% 113.7% 6.8%
    59 17 Green Bay, WI M 45.9 27.0% 54.7% 7.0%
    60 18 Lexington-Fayette, KY M 45.6 35.7% 45.7% 5.9%
    61 19 Huntsville, AL M 45.6 36.5% 54.5% 5.6%
    62 18 Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls, NY L 45.4 30.1% 29.4% 6.9%
    63 19 Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI L 45.4 35.1% 32.5% 6.2%
    64 20 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT L 45.2 36.5% 28.5% 6.0%
    65 20 Worcester, MA-CT M 44.9 32.9% 55.0% 6.0%
    66 21 Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI L 44.8 33.2% 33.4% 6.3%
    67 21 Clarksville, TN-KY M 44.8 23.2% 70.1% 7.0%
    68 26 Pittsfield, MA S 44.5 32.4% 24.4% 6.4%
    69 22 Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN L 44.4 31.2% 37.7% 6.4%
    70 27 Gettysburg, PA S 44.3 23.6% 63.8% 6.9%
    71 22 Greeley, CO M 44.3 27.4% 101.2% 5.8%
    72 23 Peoria, IL M 44.0 27.4% 41.3% 6.7%
    73 28 Daphne-Fairhope-Foley, AL S 44.0 29.0% 76.5% 5.9%
    74 24 North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL M 43.9 30.6% 53.3% 6.0%
    75 29 Springfield, IL S 43.9 34.0% 30.0% 6.0%
    76 30 Santa Fe, NM S 43.7 41.7% 37.1% 4.8%
    77 25 New Haven-Milford, CT M 43.4 33.5% 30.1% 5.9%
    78 26 Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, IA-IL M 43.3 26.5% 41.2% 6.6%
    79 27 Evansville, IN-KY M 43.3 24.5% 32.3% 7.0%
    80 31 Napa, CA S 43.1 32.2% 39.8% 5.8%
    81 32 Fairbanks, AK S 43.1 32.6% 52.5% 5.6%
    82 23 Kansas City, MO-KS L 43.1 33.7% 37.7% 5.7%
    83 28 Hagerstown-Martinsburg, MD-WV M 43.0 21.3% 71.5% 6.7%
    84 24 Columbus, OH L 42.7 33.7% 50.0% 5.4%
    85 33 Champaign-Urbana, IL S 42.4 39.4% 30.3% 4.9%
    86 29 Urban Honolulu, HI M 42.2 33.4% 37.5% 5.5%
    87 30 Norwich-New London, CT M 42.2 32.0% 32.7% 5.8%
    88 34 Ithaca, NY S 42.2 50.9% 21.3% 3.4%
    89 35 Johnson City, TN S 42.0 24.8% 50.2% 6.4%
    90 25 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL L 42.0 27.6% 53.1% 5.9%
    91 31 Boise City, ID M 41.9 30.7% 74.5% 5.2%
    92 26 Jacksonville, FL L 41.9 28.3% 62.5% 5.7%
    93 36 Ames, IA S 41.8 48.2% 22.0% 3.7%
    94 27 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC L 41.8 29.6% 41.2% 5.8%
    95 28 Providence-Warwick, RI-MA L 41.7 29.6% 30.9% 6.0%
    96 37 Rochester, MN S 41.7 35.3% 56.9% 4.8%
    97 38 Grand Junction, CO S 41.6 27.6% 63.7% 5.7%
    98 32 Bremerton-Silverdale, WA M 41.6 30.9% 42.2% 5.6%
    99 33 Roanoke, VA M 41.6 27.1% 40.7% 6.1%
    100 29 Birmingham-Hoover, AL L 41.5 28.6% 39.9% 5.9%
    101 39 Charlottesville, VA S 41.4 42.2% 48.2% 3.9%
    102 34 Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ M 41.4 27.6% 44.3% 5.9%
    103 40 Las Cruces, NM S 41.3 27.9% 59.3% 5.6%
    104 30 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA L 41.3 31.7% 36.6% 5.5%
    105 41 Winchester, VA-WV S 41.2 24.2% 71.3% 5.9%
    106 31 San Diego-Carlsbad, CA L 41.2 34.6% 39.9% 5.0%
    107 35 Fort Collins, CO M 41.2 43.3% 43.6% 3.8%
    108 32 Cleveland-Elyria, OH L 41.0 29.8% 23.8% 5.9%
    109 36 Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY M 40.8 34.3% 28.0% 5.2%
    110 37 Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA M 40.6 38.9% 18.6% 4.7%
    111 42 Bellingham, WA S 40.4 32.2% 51.9% 5.0%
    112 33 Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN L 40.4 27.0% 42.5% 5.8%
    113 43 Bismarck, ND S 40.3 30.5% 65.3% 4.9%
    114 34 Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI L 40.0 29.0% 24.6% 5.7%
    115 38 Lynchburg, VA M 39.8 24.6% 46.9% 5.9%
    116 35 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL L 39.8 29.3% 45.2% 5.3%
    117 39 Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL M 39.7 26.2% 84.1% 5.1%
    118 44 Appleton, WI S 39.7 27.6% 48.8% 5.4%
    119 36 Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC L 39.7 32.0% 102.3% 4.0%
    120 40 Lancaster, PA M 39.6 26.1% 47.7% 5.6%
    121 41 Akron, OH M 39.4 29.7% 27.7% 5.4%
    122 42 Lincoln, NE M 39.4 36.3% 37.0% 4.4%
    123 43 Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton, PA M 39.3 23.6% 35.7% 6.1%
    124 45 Jonesboro, AR S 39.2 23.1% 58.5% 5.8%
    125 37 Richmond, VA L 39.2 32.5% 37.0% 4.9%
    126 44 Erie, PA M 39.2 26.6% 32.9% 5.7%
    127 46 Sierra Vista-Douglas, AZ S 39.1 24.5% 52.4% 5.7%
    128 38 Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL L 39.0 29.5% 66.5% 4.7%
    129 47 Dover, DE S 39.0 23.9% 79.0% 5.3%
    130 45 Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC-NC M 39.0 22.7% 163.1% 4.0%
    131 46 Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island, FL M 39.0 32.4% 58.2% 4.5%
    132 39 Rochester, NY L 38.8 32.6% 27.6% 4.9%
    133 40 Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX L 38.7 30.9% 61.7% 4.5%
    134 48 Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, HI S 38.7 27.4% 60.0% 5.0%
    135 49 Walla Walla, WA S 38.5 28.1% 37.8% 5.2%
    136 50 Flagstaff, AZ S 38.4 34.3% 40.1% 4.4%
    137 47 Ogden-Clearfield, UT M 38.4 29.0% 79.0% 4.4%
    138 48 San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles-Arroyo Grande, CA M 38.3 31.5% 35.4% 4.8%
    139 51 Bloomsburg-Berwick, PA S 38.2 23.0% 40.8% 5.8%
    140 52 Fond du Lac, WI S 38.2 22.6% 48.7% 5.7%
    141 49 Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA M 38.2 29.4% 34.8% 5.0%
    142 53 Dubuque, IA S 38.0 26.6% 38.2% 5.3%
    143 54 Homosassa Springs, FL S 38.0 18.9% 70.8% 5.8%
    144 50 Manchester-Nashua, NH M 37.9 34.5% 27.0% 4.4%
    145 51 Reno, NV M 37.8 28.4% 58.5% 4.7%
    146 55 La Crosse-Onalaska, WI-MN S 37.5 29.5% 34.1% 4.9%
    147 41 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX L 37.4 32.6% 54.6% 4.1%
    148 42 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX L 37.4 26.7% 66.2% 4.7%
    149 56 Cheyenne, WY S 37.2 28.2% 45.2% 4.8%
    150 43 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA L 37.1 35.2% 47.7% 3.8%
    151 52 Wichita, KS M 37.0 29.0% 36.9% 4.8%
    152 57 Kingston, NY S 37.0 29.8% 25.9% 4.8%
    153 53 Ocala, FL M 36.9 19.0% 84.4% 5.3%
    154 44 Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV L 36.9 22.1% 91.4% 4.7%
    155 45 Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN L 36.8 30.8% 51.4% 4.3%
    156 54 Shreveport-Bossier City, LA M 36.8 24.2% 56.8% 5.0%
    157 58 Columbus, IN S 36.6 27.0% 36.8% 4.9%
    158 46 Sacramento–Roseville–Arden-Arcade, CA L 36.6 30.8% 48.4% 4.2%
    159 59 Altoona, PA S 36.5 19.7% 41.8% 5.8%
    160 47 Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ L 36.4 29.2% 62.5% 4.2%
    161 55 Syracuse, NY M 36.4 29.9% 25.6% 4.7%
    162 56 Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA M 36.1 31.2% 34.8% 4.3%
    163 60 Niles-Benton Harbor, MI S 36.1 24.9% 26.5% 5.3%
    164 61 Elmira, NY S 36.1 23.9% 29.0% 5.3%
    165 57 Colorado Springs, CO M 36.0 35.3% 43.7% 3.6%
    166 62 Chico, CA S 35.9 26.6% 36.7% 4.8%
    167 58 Columbia, SC M 35.9 30.7% 44.3% 4.1%
    168 59 Baton Rouge, LA M 35.8 27.3% 46.7% 4.5%
    169 63 Cape Girardeau, MO-IL S 35.3 24.9% 31.3% 5.0%
    170 60 Springfield, MO M 35.2 25.8% 51.2% 4.5%
    171 64 Greenville, NC S 35.1 28.4% 33.3% 4.4%
    172 61 Lansing-East Lansing, MI M 34.9 32.4% 23.8% 4.0%
    173 65 Staunton-Waynesboro, VA S 34.9 22.4% 41.7% 5.0%
    174 66 Pocatello, ID S 34.9 28.4% 28.0% 4.5%
    175 48 New Orleans-Metairie, LA L 34.9 27.4% 21.8% 4.7%
    176 62 Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin, SC M 34.8 26.8% 81.5% 3.8%
    177 67 Midland, MI S 34.7 33.2% 21.8% 3.9%
    178 63 Kalamazoo-Portage, MI M 34.6 31.0% 25.3% 4.1%
    179 68 Barnstable Town, MA S 34.5 37.1% 10.2% 3.5%
    180 64 Atlantic City-Hammonton, NJ M 34.5 23.5% 40.0% 4.8%
    181 65 Duluth, MN-WI M 34.3 25.2% 28.9% 4.7%
    182 69 Wheeling, WV-OH S 34.3 20.0% 34.1% 5.3%
    183 49 Memphis, TN-MS-AR L 34.1 26.4% 38.1% 4.4%
    184 70 Glens Falls, NY S 34.1 23.6% 37.2% 4.7%
    185 50 Salt Lake City, UT L 34.1 31.2% 43.8% 3.6%
    186 71 Monroe, MI S 34.0 19.4% 47.7% 5.1%
    187 72 Harrisonburg, VA S 33.7 25.6% 47.1% 4.2%
    188 73 Albany, OR S 33.7 18.3% 62.1% 4.9%
    189 66 Spartanburg, SC M 33.6 22.6% 56.1% 4.4%
    190 67 Greensboro-High Point, NC M 33.5 27.5% 36.6% 4.1%
    191 74 Binghamton, NY S 33.1 26.4% 19.9% 4.4%
    192 75 Lafayette-West Lafayette, IN S 32.9 32.5% 32.6% 3.3%
    193 76 Lebanon, PA S 32.9 20.1% 47.8% 4.7%
    194 77 Bay City, MI S 32.8 19.2% 35.4% 5.0%
    195 68 Eugene, OR M 32.6 29.2% 30.9% 3.7%
    196 78 Coeur d’Alene, ID S 32.6 23.0% 68.6% 3.9%
    197 79 Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Radford, VA S 32.6 29.3% 38.0% 3.6%
    198 80 Battle Creek, MI S 32.6 20.8% 31.1% 4.8%
    199 51 Oklahoma City, OK L 32.5 27.9% 41.8% 3.7%
    200 69 Chattanooga, TN-GA M 32.4 23.7% 42.1% 4.2%
    201 81 College Station-Bryan, TX S 32.3 34.2% 49.9% 2.7%
    202 70 Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC M 32.2 24.5% 45.2% 4.0%
    203 71 Springfield, MA M 32.2 29.2% 7.8% 4.0%
    204 82 Carbondale-Marion, IL S 32.0 27.5% 27.3% 3.9%
    205 83 Johnstown, PA S 32.0 18.7% 28.4% 5.0%
    206 84 Saginaw, MI S 31.9 20.7% 26.3% 4.8%
    207 72 El Paso, TX M 31.8 20.8% 57.7% 4.2%
    208 73 Tucson, AZ M 31.8 30.1% 35.0% 3.3%
    209 74 Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent, FL M 31.7 25.4% 37.7% 3.9%
    210 85 Bowling Green, KY S 31.5 25.3% 86.0% 3.1%
    211 86 Charleston, WV S 31.5 22.8% -4.8% 4.9%
    212 87 Medford, OR S 31.4 26.0% 40.9% 3.7%
    213 75 Santa Rosa, CA M 31.4 31.7% 25.4% 3.2%
    214 88 Chambersburg-Waynesboro, PA S 31.3 19.1% 54.2% 4.3%
    215 76 Tallahassee, FL M 31.2 36.6% 26.8% 2.5%
    216 89 Jackson, TN S 31.2 23.8% 50.4% 3.8%
    217 90 Brunswick, GA S 31.0 23.4% 50.2% 3.8%
    218 77 Fayetteville, NC M 31.0 22.3% 43.0% 4.0%
    219 52 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA L 31.0 20.1% 73.9% 3.8%
    220 78 Anchorage, AK M 30.9 30.0% 41.4% 3.0%
    221 91 Oshkosh-Neenah, WI S 30.8 26.4% 30.1% 3.6%
    222 79 Dayton, OH M 30.7 26.6% 14.1% 3.9%
    223 92 Decatur, IL S 30.5 21.3% 24.9% 4.3%
    224 80 Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL M 30.5 21.3% 66.9% 3.6%
    225 81 Killeen-Temple, TX M 30.5 21.6% 61.5% 3.7%
    226 82 Tulsa, OK M 30.5 26.0% 33.0% 3.6%
    227 83 Reading, PA M 30.4 22.5% 35.3% 4.0%
    228 84 Jackson, MS M 30.4 29.3% 35.6% 3.1%
    229 85 Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR M 30.3 27.4% 37.6% 3.3%
    230 86 Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH M 30.1 18.8% 63.5% 3.9%
    231 93 Wausau, WI S 30.0 22.2% 37.5% 3.9%
    232 87 Port St. Lucie, FL M 30.0 23.1% 60.6% 3.4%
    233 94 Grants Pass, OR S 30.0 18.3% 48.6% 4.2%
    234 88 Utica-Rome, NY M 30.0 21.9% 24.6% 4.1%
    235 95 Casper, WY S 29.9 23.5% 47.8% 3.5%
    236 89 Canton-Massillon, OH M 29.7 21.4% 26.3% 4.1%
    237 90 Albuquerque, NM M 29.6 30.7% 40.7% 2.6%
    238 96 Sebastian-Vero Beach, FL S 29.4 26.2% 42.3% 3.1%
    239 91 Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA M 29.4 32.2% 18.4% 2.7%
    240 97 Prescott, AZ S 29.3 24.3% 55.2% 3.2%
    241 98 Muncie, IN S 29.0 24.1% 16.1% 3.7%
    242 99 Lake Charles, LA S 28.9 20.3% 35.5% 3.9%
    243 92 Lubbock, TX M 28.9 26.9% 37.6% 3.0%
    244 93 York-Hanover, PA M 28.6 21.9% 39.1% 3.5%
    245 94 Mobile, AL M 28.5 22.3% 30.4% 3.6%
    246 100 Grand Forks, ND-MN S 28.5 27.4% 17.3% 3.2%
    247 95 Brownsville-Harlingen, TX M 28.4 17.1% 63.6% 3.7%
    248 101 Yuba City, CA S 28.4 17.0% 61.7% 3.8%
    249 96 Olympia-Tumwater, WA M 28.4 32.0% 41.8% 2.1%
    250 97 Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA M 28.4 20.3% 19.3% 4.0%
    251 102 Lewiston, ID-WA S 28.3 22.1% 32.5% 3.5%
    252 98 Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL M 28.2 26.5% 33.4% 2.9%
    253 99 Toledo, OH M 28.2 24.8% 10.5% 3.5%
    254 100 Knoxville, TN M 28.1 27.1% 55.2% 2.5%
    255 101 Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL M 28.0 18.4% 60.9% 3.5%
    256 103 Lewiston-Auburn, ME S 28.0 18.3% 35.8% 3.9%
    257 104 Bangor, ME S 27.9 23.6% 30.0% 3.3%
    258 105 Midland, TX S 27.9 27.3% 49.9% 2.5%
    259 102 Vallejo-Fairfield, CA M 27.9 24.5% 31.8% 3.1%
    260 106 Florence, SC S 27.9 20.5% 33.9% 3.6%
    261 107 Springfield, OH S 27.8 18.9% 23.5% 4.0%
    262 103 Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC M 27.8 17.5% 40.5% 3.9%
    263 108 Punta Gorda, FL S 27.8 21.0% 40.3% 3.4%
    264 104 McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX M 27.8 16.2% 84.9% 3.3%
    265 109 Gainesville, GA S 27.7 21.7% 59.6% 3.0%
    266 110 Joplin, MO S 27.6 19.9% 38.3% 3.6%
    267 111 St. Cloud, MN S 27.6 24.0% 37.9% 3.0%
    268 112 Williamsport, PA S 27.6 19.0% 26.1% 3.9%
    269 105 Cedar Rapids, IA M 27.5 27.6% 26.3% 2.7%
    270 113 Tuscaloosa, AL S 27.4 24.7% 37.1% 2.9%
    271 114 Eau Claire, WI S 27.3 25.0% 31.8% 2.9%
    272 115 Mount Vernon-Anacortes, WA S 27.1 23.7% 39.5% 2.9%
    273 116 Tyler, TX S 27.1 25.3% 40.7% 2.7%
    274 106 Fort Wayne, IN M 27.0 24.3% 27.2% 3.0%
    275 117 Racine, WI S 26.9 23.4% 25.4% 3.2%
    276 118 Beckley, WV S 26.9 15.9% 33.9% 4.0%
    277 119 Hammond, LA S 26.4 19.3% 58.0% 3.0%
    278 107 Salem, OR M 26.3 23.6% 34.3% 2.8%
    279 120 Topeka, KS S 26.2 26.3% 18.4% 2.7%
    280 121 Hot Springs, AR S 26.1 21.1% 31.4% 3.1%
    281 122 Pueblo, CO S 26.0 21.3% 37.2% 3.0%
    282 123 Lima, OH S 25.8 17.1% 27.2% 3.7%
    283 124 Sheboygan, WI S 25.8 21.1% 26.0% 3.2%
    284 125 Jefferson City, MO S 25.7 24.0% 23.0% 2.8%
    285 126 Burlington, NC S 25.6 22.0% 36.8% 2.8%
    286 127 Waterloo-Cedar Falls, IA S 25.5 25.0% 18.1% 2.7%
    287 128 Michigan City-La Porte, IN S 25.3 17.4% 31.5% 3.4%
    288 108 Laredo, TX M 25.3 16.8% 70.4% 2.9%
    289 129 Jacksonville, NC S 25.3 17.8% 56.3% 3.0%
    290 130 Muskegon, MI S 25.3 17.3% 31.5% 3.4%
    291 109 South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI M 25.3 24.4% 17.3% 2.7%
    292 110 Fort Smith, AR-OK M 25.2 16.7% 33.0% 3.5%
    293 111 Gainesville, FL M 25.0 37.5% 24.2% 0.8%
    294 112 Winston-Salem, NC M 25.0 25.7% 66.2% 1.7%
    295 113 Amarillo, TX M 24.9 23.4% 31.9% 2.5%
    296 114 Columbus, GA-AL M 24.9 21.1% 32.3% 2.8%
    297 131 San Angelo, TX S 24.9 22.2% 30.8% 2.7%
    298 132 Decatur, AL S 24.8 18.9% 30.2% 3.1%
    299 133 Cleveland, TN S 24.8 17.6% 44.1% 3.1%
    300 134 Janesville-Beloit, WI S 24.8 19.7% 29.8% 3.0%
    301 135 Weirton-Steubenville, WV-OH S 24.3 15.7% 20.6% 3.6%
    302 115 Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol, TN-VA M 24.1 18.6% 26.2% 3.1%
    303 136 Valdosta, GA S 24.0 20.1% 35.4% 2.7%
    304 116 Flint, MI M 23.9 19.3% 18.8% 3.0%
    305 117 Stockton-Lodi, CA M 23.5 17.2% 53.0% 2.6%
    306 118 Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin, FL M 23.4 25.6% 63.8% 1.3%
    307 137 Jackson, MI S 23.4 19.1% 22.4% 2.9%
    308 138 Abilene, TX S 23.4 22.1% 21.1% 2.5%
    309 139 Watertown-Fort Drum, NY S 23.4 18.9% 26.2% 2.8%
    310 119 Kennewick-Richland, WA M 23.1 24.8% 54.4% 1.5%
    311 140 East Stroudsburg, PA S 23.1 22.6% 36.9% 2.1%
    312 141 Cumberland, MD-WV S 23.0 16.5% 24.2% 3.1%
    313 142 Sioux City, IA-NE-SD S 22.9 20.8% 34.5% 2.3%
    314 120 Fresno, CA M 22.6 19.8% 41.1% 2.3%
    315 121 Beaumont-Port Arthur, TX M 22.4 17.4% 28.9% 2.7%
    316 122 Rockford, IL M 22.1 21.0% 23.0% 2.3%
    317 143 Mankato-North Mankato, MN S 22.0 28.8% 27.1% 1.2%
    318 123 Montgomery, AL M 21.9 25.9% 19.1% 1.7%
    319 144 Dothan, AL S 21.8 18.3% 33.2% 2.4%
    320 145 Gadsden, AL S 21.7 16.2% 24.2% 2.8%
    321 124 Gulfport-Biloxi-Pascagoula, MS M 21.2 19.3% 73.8% 1.4%
    322 125 Merced, CA M 21.2 13.5% 59.1% 2.4%
    323 146 Rome, GA S 20.9 18.2% 22.4% 2.4%
    324 147 Elkhart-Goshen, IN S 20.9 17.8% 29.2% 2.3%
    325 148 Goldsboro, NC S 20.8 17.4% 28.4% 2.4%
    326 149 Rapid City, SD S 20.8 24.5% 42.0% 1.2%
    327 150 Mansfield, OH S 20.7 15.3% 19.3% 2.7%
    328 151 Rocky Mount, NC S 20.5 16.3% 28.6% 2.4%
    329 152 Hanford-Corcoran, CA S 20.5 12.9% 48.8% 2.5%
    330 153 Grand Island, NE S 20.5 18.2% 25.6% 2.2%
    331 154 Longview, WA S 20.1 15.6% 36.7% 2.3%
    332 126 Spokane-Spokane Valley, WA M 20.1 25.9% 39.5% 0.9%
    333 155 El Centro, CA S 20.1 12.7% 55.8% 2.3%
    334 156 Kokomo, IN S 20.1 19.5% -2.9% 2.4%
    335 157 Terre Haute, IN S 19.8 19.4% 14.6% 2.1%
    336 158 Alexandria, LA S 19.6 17.7% 25.6% 2.0%
    337 127 Modesto, CA M 19.5 16.0% 40.5% 2.0%
    338 159 Yuma, AZ S 19.3 13.9% 48.8% 2.1%
    339 160 Billings, MT S 19.2 26.8% 28.2% 0.7%
    340 161 St. Joseph, MO-KS S 19.0 18.3% 21.9% 1.9%
    341 162 Macon, GA S 19.0 20.4% 15.9% 1.7%
    342 163 Lawton, OK S 18.8 20.5% 28.1% 1.4%
    343 164 Texarkana, TX-AR S 18.6 16.8% 33.8% 1.8%
    344 165 Owensboro, KY S 18.3 17.4% 23.0% 1.8%
    345 166 Panama City, FL S 17.8 18.8% 43.4% 1.1%
    346 167 Morristown, TN S 17.7 14.4% 13.3% 2.2%
    347 128 Visalia-Porterville, CA M 17.7 13.3% 47.1% 1.8%
    348 168 Odessa, TX S 17.7 13.8% 42.1% 1.8%
    349 169 Idaho Falls, ID S 17.4 24.5% 41.4% 0.3%
    350 170 Sherman-Denison, TX S 17.3 18.6% 23.3% 1.4%
    351 171 Vineland-Bridgeton, NJ S 17.3 13.7% 27.0% 2.0%
    352 172 Warner Robins, GA S 17.2 20.1% 74.6% 0.3%
    353 129 Lafayette, LA M 17.1 21.6% 107.4% -0.5%
    354 173 Wichita Falls, TX S 17.0 20.5% 10.5% 1.3%
    355 174 Kankakee, IL S 17.0 16.6% 23.1% 1.6%
    356 175 New Bern, NC S 16.6 18.9% 23.6% 1.2%
    357 176 Sebring, FL S 15.9 15.1% 23.8% 1.5%
    358 177 Parkersburg-Vienna, WV S 15.6 16.9% -33.6% 2.1%
    359 178 Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ S 15.5 11.3% 56.0% 1.4%
    360 130 Waco, TX M 15.3 19.7% 27.9% 0.6%
    361 179 Athens-Clarke County, GA S 15.2 31.6% 20.3% -0.8%
    362 180 Monroe, LA S 15.1 21.7% 13.8% 0.6%
    363 181 Danville, IL S 14.3 13.9% 8.7% 1.5%
    364 131 Bakersfield, CA M 14.2 14.4% 41.6% 0.9%
    365 182 Redding, CA S 13.9 17.3% 20.3% 0.7%
    366 183 Madera, CA S 13.6 13.0% 36.4% 1.0%
    367 184 Dalton, GA S 13.4 12.2% 30.4% 1.1%
    368 185 Wenatchee, WA S 13.0 20.2% 21.0% 0.1%
    369 186 Houma-Thibodaux, LA S 12.6 13.2% 23.6% 0.9%
    370 187 Carson City, NV S 12.5 18.8% 8.5% 0.4%
    371 188 Albany, GA S 12.4 16.4% 7.9% 0.7%
    372 132 Salinas, CA M 11.6 22.2% 8.6% -0.3%
    373 189 Florence-Muscle Shoals, AL S 10.9 17.0% 5.9% 0.3%
    374 190 Yakima, WA S 10.6 15.5% 14.9% 0.2%
    375 191 Victoria, TX S 10.1 15.7% -6.8% 0.5%
    376 133 Corpus Christi, TX M 10.0 17.5% 14.5% -0.2%
    377 192 Longview, TX S 9.3 16.1% 12.3% -0.1%
    378 193 Anniston-Oxford-Jacksonville, AL S 8.0 15.0% 4.6% -0.2%
    379 194 Pine Bluff, AR S 6.0 13.8% -6.3% -0.3%
    380 195 Farmington, NM S 5.8 12.9% 15.7% -0.6%

     

    Analysis by Mark Schill, mark@praxissg.com. Measures are normalized and weighted 50% to point change in educational attainment rate, 25% growth in educated population, and 25% in 2013 educational attainment rate. Point change is the difference between the 2000 and the 2013 educational attainment rate. The Villages, FL, an extreme outlier, was excluded from the analysis. Data source: U.S. Census and American Community Survey.

    This piece originally appeared at Forbes..

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

    Mark Schill is a community process consultant, economic strategist, and public policy researcher with Praxis Strategy Group.

    Boston photo by 2nified (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • A Map Of America’s Future: Where Growth Will Be Over The Next Decade

    The world’s biggest and most dynamic economy derives its strength and resilience from its geographic diversity. Economically, at least, America is not a single country. It is a collection of seven nations and three quasi-independent city-states, each with its own tastes, proclivities, resources and problems. These nations compete with one another – the Great Lakes loses factories to the Southeast, and talent flees the brutal winters and high taxes of the city-state New York for gentler climes – but, more important, they develop synergies, albeit unintentionally. Wealth generated in the humid South or icy northern plains benefits the rest of the country; energy flows from the Dakotas and the Third Coast of Texas and Louisiana; and even as people leave the Northeast, the brightest American children, as well as those of other nations, continue to migrate to this great education mecca.

    The idea isn’t a new one – the author Joel Garreau first proposed a North America of “nine nations” 32 years ago – but it’s never been more relevant than it is today, as America’s semi-autonomous economic states continue to compete, cooperate … and thrive. Click on the thumbnail of our map to see our predictions for the job, population and GDP growth of these 10 regional blocks over the next decade, and read on below for more context.

    View the map graphic at Forbes.com.


    INLAND WEST

    The Inland West extends from the foothills of the Rockies to the coastal ranges that shelter the Pacific Coast. This is the West as we understand it historically, a land of spectacular scenery: icecaps and dry lands, sagebrush, high deserts and Alpine forests. From 2003 to 2013, it enjoyed the most rapid population growth in the nation: 21%. It is expected to continue to outgrow the rest of the country over the next decade, as the area boasts the highest percentage of young people under 20 in the U.S.

    Much of this growth was driven by a combination of quality of life factors — access to the outdoors and relatively low housing prices — as well as strong economic fundamentals. Over the past decade the area has enjoyed nearly 8% job growth, the strongest in the country, with the highest rate of STEM growth in the nation over the past decade.  Boise, Denver and Salt Lake City have posted stellar employment growth due to the energy boom and growth in technology. The western reaches of the region — the inland parts of Washington, Oregon and California — have not done as well. These areas suffer from being “red” resource- and manufacturing-oriented economies within highly regulated, high-tax “blue states.”

    THE LEFT COAST

    The Northeast may still see itself as the nation’s intellectual and cultural center, but it is steadily losing that title to the Left Coast. This region sports a unique coastal terroir, with moderate temperatures, though it may be a bit rainy in the north. The climate requires less power than elsewhere in the country for heating and air-conditioning, making its residents’ predilection for green energy more feasible.

    Over the past 20 years, the Left Coast — the least populous nation with some 18 million people — has rocketed ahead of the Northeast as a high-tech center. It has by far the highest percentage of workers in STEM professions — more than 50% above the national average — and the largest share of engineers in its workforce as well. No place on the planet can boast so many top-line tech firms: Amazon and Microsoft in the Seattle area, and in the Bay Area, Intel, Apple, Facebook and Google, among others.

    Over the next decade, the Left Coast should maintain its momentum, but ultimately it faces a Northeast-like future, with a slowing rate of population growth. High housing prices, particularly in the Bay Area, are transforming it into something of a gated community, largely out of reach to new middle-class families. The density-centric land use policies that have helped drive up Bay Area prices are also increasingly evident in places like Portland and Seattle. The Left Coast has the smallest percentage of residents under 5 outside the Great Lakes and the Northeast, suggesting that a “demographic winter” may arrive there sooner than some might suspect.

    CITY-STATE LOS ANGELES

    Once called “an island on the land,” southern California remains distinct from everywhere else in the country. Long a lure for migrants, it has slipped in recent decades, losing not only population to other areas but whole industries and major corporations. The once-youthful area is also experiencing among the most rapid declines in its under-15 population in the nation. Yet it retains America’s top port, the lion’s share of the entertainment business, the largest garment district–and the best climate in North America.

    THE GREAT PLAINS

    The vast region from Texas to Montana has often been written off as “flyover country.” But in the past decade, no nation in America has displayed greater economic dynamism. Since the recession, it has posted the second-fastest job growth rate in the U.S., after the Inland West, and last year it led the country in employment growth. The Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas all regularly register among the lowest unemployment rates in the country.

    The good times on the Plains are largely due to the new energy boom, which has been driven by a series of major shale finds: the Bakken formation in North Dakota, as well as the Barnett and Permian in Texas. The region’s agricultural sector has also benefited from soaring demand in developing countries.

    Most remarkable of all has been the Plains’ demographic revival. The region enjoyed a 14% increase in population over the past 10 years, a rate 40% above the national average, and is expected to expand a further 6% by 2023, more than twice the projected growth rate in the Northeast. This is partly due to its attractiveness to families — the low-cost region has a higher percentage of residents under 5 than any other beside the Inland West.

    But outside of the oil boom towns, don’t expect a revival of the small communities that dot much of the region. The new Great Plains is increasingly urbanized, with an archipelago of vibrant, growing cities from Dallas and Oklahoma City to Omaha, Sioux Falls and Fargo.

    Its major challenges: accommodating an increasingly diverse population and maintaining adequate water supplies, particularly for the Southern Plains. The strong pro-growth spirit in the region, its wealth in natural resources and a high level of education, particularly in the northern tier, suggest that the Plains will play a far more important role in the future than anyone might have thought a decade ago.

    THE THIRD COAST

    Once a sleepy, semitropical backwater, the Third Coast, which stretches along the Gulf of Mexico from south Texas to western Florida, has come out of the recession stronger than virtually any other region. Since 2001, its job base has expanded 7%, and it is projected to grow another 18% the coming decade.

    The energy industry and burgeoning trade with Latin America are powering the Third Coast, combined with a relatively low cost, business-friendly climate. By 2023 its capital–Houston–will be widely acknowledged as America’s next great global city. Many other cities across the Gulf, including New Orleans and Corpus Christi, are also major energy hubs. The Third Coast has a concentration of energy jobs five times the national rate, and those jobs have an average annual salary of $100,000, according to EMSI.

    As the area gets wealthier, The Third Coast’s economy will continue to diversify. Houston, which is now the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse metro area, according to a recent Rice study, is home to the world’s largest medical center and has dethroned New York City as the nation’s leading exporter. Mobile, Ala., seems poised to become an industrial center and locus for trade with Latin America, and New Orleans has made a dramatic comeback as a cultural and business destination since Katrina.

    THE GREAT LAKES

    The nation’s industrial heartland hemorrhaged roughly a million manufacturing jobs over the past 10 years, making it the only one of our seven nations to lose jobs overall during that period. But the prognosis is not as bleak as some believe.

    Employment is growing again thanks to a mild renaissance in manufacturing, paced by an improving auto industry and a shale boom in parts of Ohio. The region has many underappreciated assets, such as the largest number of engineers in the nation, ample supplies of fresh water and some of the nation’s best public universities. With fifty-eight million people, it boasts an economy on a par with that of France.

    Yet we cannot expect much future population growth in the Great Lakes, the second most populous American nation. Its population is aging rapidly, and the percentage under 5 is almost as low as the Northeast.

    THE GREAT NORTHEAST

    The Northeast–which excludes the city-state of New York–has been the country’s brain center since before the American Revolution. This region is home to some 41 million people, and leads the nation in the percentage of workers engaged in business services, as well as in jobs that require a college education. With average wages of $76,000, $19,000 above the national average, the area boasts a GDP of $2.2 trillion, about equal to that of Brazil.

    The Northeast is one of the country’s whitest regions — Anglos account for over 70% of the population — and one of the wealthiest. In many ways, it resembles aging Western Europe in its demographic profile. The Northeast is the most child-free region outside the retirement hub of south Florida. Coupled with sustained domestic out-migration, its population growth is likely to be among the slowest in the nation in the decade ahead.

    Good thing its residents are highly educated — diminishing numbers and the consequent decline in political power suggest that the Northeast may need to depend more on its wits in decade ahead.

    CITY-STATE NEW YORK

    The Big Apple’s much heralded comeback has assured its place as one of the world’s great global cities. But the city faces challenges in terms of soaring indebtedness, rapid aging, a weak technical workforce, expensive housing and high taxes. It also will struggle with competition from rising cities of the other nations such as San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Houston, each of which threatens New York’s traditional role in key sectors of the economy.

    THE SOUTHEAST MANUFACTURING BELT

    At the time of the Civil War the southeastern United States was both outpeopled and outmanufactured. Today the Southeast, is the largest region in terms of population (60 million) and is establishing itself as the country’s second industrial hub, after the Great Lakes.

    It is attracting large-scale investment from manufacturers from Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Although most of the region still lags in educational attainment, the education gap with the Northeast and Great Lakes is slowly shrinking. The population holding college degrees has been expanding strongly in Nashville, Raleigh, Birmingham, Richmond and Charlotte.

    More babies and the migration of families, including immigrants, to this low-cost region suggest an even larger political footprint for the Southeast in the decades ahead. Population growth has been more than twice as fast since 2001 as in the Northeast, a trend that is projected continue in the next decade. The region looks set to become smarter, more urban and cosmopolitan, and perhaps a bit less conservative.

    CITY-STATE MIAMI

    Greater Miami often seems more the capital of Latin America than it does an American region. Its population is heavily Hispanic, and trade, finance, construction and tourism tend to focus southward. But Miami faces the constraints of an aging, and largely childless, population–which means it will continue to rely on newcomers both from abroad and from the colder regions of the U.S.

    This story appears in the September 23, 2013 issue of Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

    Mark Schill is Vice President of Research at Praxis Strategy Group, an economic development and research firm working with communities and states to improve their economies.

  • Listing the Best Places Lists: Perception Versus Reality

    Often best places lists reflect as much on what’s being measured, and who is being measured as on the inherent advantages of any locale.  Some cities that have grown rapidly in jobs, for example, often do not do as well if the indicator has more to do with perceived “quality” of employment.

    Take places like Denver and Seattle. Both do well on what may be considered high-tech measurements – bandwidth, educated migration, entrepreneurial start ups – but have trailed other places in terms of creating jobs. Others, such as Oklahoma City and Raleigh, do better in terms of overall job creation and cost competitiveness.

    There are effectively few truly objective criteria, and the Area Development list does tend to weigh a bit heavy on the factors that help more expensive – although not necessarily the most costly – cities. If cost of doing business, or regulatory environments were given more weight, some of the high fliers would not do as well.

    We prefer to focus less on atmospherics and more on how people, and businesses, are voting for their feet. San Francisco and New York have generally had slower job growth and greater outmigration, but do well on lists that focus on perceived qualitative factors.

    But then there is Austin. Here is one region that has it all, the low costs and favorable regulatory climate of Texas along with the amenities associated with a high-tech region. The area creates a large number of jobs of varying types and is still inexpensive enough to attract young, upwardly mobile families. This gives it a critical advantage over places like Silicon Valley, Los Angeles or New York.  Unlike those three centers, Austin performs extraordinarily well in quantitative measurements.

    The region that most closely matches Austin in these respects is not Seattle and Denver, but Raleigh Durham. Recently a group of leaders from Raleigh made a visit to Denver to learn what makes that city successful. Speaking to the group, we pointed out that by objective measurement – job growth, educated migration, population growth – Raleigh beat Denver by a long shot, yet it was to Denver the group was looking for inspiration. In fact, over the past three years, Americans have moved to Raleigh at a rate more than three times that of Denver.  Perception can be a funny thing which makes a winner feel inferior to a clear runner-up.

    Another strange result is that New York and Houston had the same number of mentions. Yet looking at numbers — from educated migration, job growth, population increase — Houston slaughters New York. People, from the college educated on down are flocking to Houston while fleeing, in rather large numbers, from New York. One has to wonder where the rankers live and where they are coming from. Houston triumphs on performance, while New York, to a large extent, wins on perception. 

    Looking simply at job growth over the past ten years for the Leading Locations mentioned on at least five surveys, the 14 regions separate themselves into three groups.  The top tier of places – Austin, Raleigh, San Antonio, and Houston – all have seen job growth of more than 12% and seem to be recovering from the recession faster than the others.  

    Salt Lake City and Charlotte were tracking with the top tier of places until 2007 but have since fallen to the second tier of cities.  The remainder of the second tier includes steady growers Dallas and Lincoln, along with Oklahoma City, a region that has seen a boom in jobs since bottoming out in 2003.

    The final job growth tier of places includes five regions that have fewer jobs than ten years ago.  Seattle drops just below the zero line after being hit particularly hard by the 2001 and 2008 recessions, while New York and Denver finish near the national rate.  Pittsburgh and Boston spent most of the decade below their 2000 employment levels, but each seem to be recovering from the recession faster than many of the other Leading Locations cities. 

    But perhaps the biggest problem with lists has to do with the size of regions. Much of the fastest growth in America, particularly in terms of jobs, has been in small metros, many with fewer than 1 million or 500,000 residents. Smaller dynamic areas such as Anchorage, Alaska; Bismarck, North Dakota; Dubuque, Iowa; or Elizabethtown, Kentucky – all in the top 25 of NewGeography’s Best Cities for Job Growth 2011 Rankings – are too small to show up on some lists yet may be a location of choice for expansion. This reflects not so much their relative desirability but the fact that, unlike larger regions, they simply are not included on many rankings.

    Ultimately, a list of lists does tell us much, but perhaps only so much for a specific individual or business. For someone interested in the movie business, for example, Los Angeles – and increasingly places like New Orleans or Albuquerque – are great draws, but perhaps not so much for financial services.  The lists of lists are useful to identify hotspots, but for most location decisions, it may be more imperative to drill down to more detailed industry sectors and workforce attributes. And most of all, take the perception factor into account and look instead at the real numbers to tell you where to go.

    This piece first appeared at AreaDevelopment.com, as part of its Leading Locations series discussing best cities rankings.

    Joel Kotkin is a Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in California, an adjunct fellow with the London-based Legatum Institute, and the author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. Mark Schill is Vice President of Research at Praxis Strategy Group, an economic research and community strategy firm.  Both are editors at NewGeography.com, a provider of two surveys for Area Development’s Leading Locations list.

    Photo by mclcbooks

  • Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

  • Go North Young Man

    With his foreign policy team now in place, President-elect Barack Obama certainly will be urged to make his first forays into high profile places like Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, as well as to greet his devoted fan base in Europe.

    But before heading off on the diplomatic grand tour, he might do well to turn his attention first to the country with which we have the closest political, economic and environmental ties: Canada. Although not as momentous or sexy a locale as Paris or Jerusalem, Ottawa could well hold the key to developing a bold new strategy for America in an increasingly incoherent and multi-polar world.

    A focus on Canada and to some extent Mexico as well, would require a reversal of the kind of wide-ranging foreign policy focus that has dominated the country since the 1940s. In that period, the United States has extended – one might increasingly say overextended — its economic and political reach ever further from its continental base.

    In the process, the country has become ever more intertwined with unreliable and often malicious regimes on the Asian continent and subservient to the interests of an often jealous and uncomprehending Europe. As a result, the country has sacrificed its own economic health, becoming ever more dependent on fuel, manufactured goods and even its self-esteem from countries with which we often share distressingly little.

    Instead, the new President should place greater emphasis on the fundamental basis of our uniqueness and economic strength: the enormous continent we share with our Canadian as well as Mexican neighbors. This would represent a return to a version of the politics – so important in our 19th Century emergence – that understood resources, natural and human, constitute the true foundation of national greatness.

    This shift also would help us establish significant psychological distance between the United States and Europe. Although there are segments of the country, notably in the Northeast, who would prefer America become a clone of the Old Continent, our demographic and physical realities are diverging every day from those of a rapidly aging and resource-poor Europe.

    In contrast, Canada shares with America a somewhat more vibrant demography. This is driven largely by immigrants who are rapidly integrating and invigorating both countries. With Australia, the two countries have emerged as the preferred location for immigrants in part because they are where they are – in sharp contrast with that of Europe – most likely to succeed.

    Being a country of immigrant aspiration represents just one aspect of our close cultural ties with Canada. Our northern neighbor ranks among the largest senders of immigrants as well; roughly 840,000 Canadian citizens now have established themselves south of the border. On a familial level millions of Canadians have relations with Americans; in fact, places like Los Angeles, if current and former Canadians were counted, would constitute among the largest cities in that country.

    Canada is also our country’s largest source of visitors – there are parts of Florida where French is the second language – and a major player in our national real estate and financial market. Whole sections of the northern Great Plains depend on consumers coming from over the border. (Full disclosure: Joel Kotkin’s wife is a native of Montreal, Quebec and the Schills live in Grand Forks, an icy spit from the Manitoba border).

    Most critically our economic ties to Canada represent the largest bilateral relationship in the world while Mexico has emerged as our third largest trading partner. And unlike our chronically poor terms of engagement with countries like China and Japan, our trade with Canada and Mexico also includes healthy transactions in basic manufactured goods, technology and farm products.

    At the same time, Canada and United States together share a critical interest in agricultural commodities, a market where they are the undisputed world leaders. In a world that is likely to get too crowded and short of basic resources, a strong North America should be well-positioned in comparison with relatively resource-poor competitors such as Western Europe and East Asia.

    But perhaps the most critical relationship lies in the energy arena. The globally Saudi-centered energy policy of recent years, particularly during the Bush-Cheney era, has fueled our deadliest enemies and also threatens both our environment and long-term economic viability.

    A U.S.-Canada energy consortium — with the eventual involvement of Mexico — provides an out from our fundamental geopolitical dilemma: how to grow our economy while reducing our dependence on imported energy and, over time, carbon-emitting fuels. This could take the form of something like a North American Energy Community, which would help coordinate research, development and environmental resources across the continent.

    This approach would offer a way to shift our economic interests away from unreliable and unfriendly regimes towards countries with whom we have far better personal, political and economic ties. Current estimates indicate we will increase oil imports from 12.6 million barrels a day today to 16.4 million in 2030. More than half of that is expected to come from OPEC suppliers, with much of the rest from Russia and the Central Asia autocracies.

    A continental strategy would halt this dangerous slide. Taken together, the resources of our three countries are both immense and extraordinarily diverse. Overall, North America ranks second only to the Middle East in proven oil reserves. Canada, for example, has the world’s second largest proven crude oil reserves, outpaced only by Saudi Arabia; the United States ranks 11th and Mexico 14th. The three North American states rank in the top fifteen in natural gas production, as well.

    This alliance can work both in the short run on fossil fuels and will, over time, blossom with the shift to renewables. Canada, well known for its surplus of fossil fuels, also possesses promising potential in hydroelectric and wind energy. Wind alone, Canadian researchers believe, could provide 20 percent of that nation’s power. Prince Edward Island, on the country’s east coast, is already conducting a major experiment to shift its primary energy dependence towards wind and biomass.

    Mexico, long an oil exporter, needs new technology both to upgrade its current energy industry and to exploit its potential in renewable fuels. Over time, experts say, Mexican production of fossil fuels will drop, but the nation has an almost totally unexploited potential in solar and sugar-based ethanol fuel, following the Brazilian model. For its part, the United States also has considerable solar, wind, and biofuels, of which we are already the world’s second largest producer.

    This energy alliance would also help spark employment and growth across the continent. Money spent on development and importation of energy from Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Iran offers few benefits for our economy. We conduct pathetically little export trade with these nations; we constitute less than 5 percent of Russia’s imports, less than 14 percent of Saudi Arabia’s, and virtually none of Iran’s. Europe, Japan, and, increasingly, China – not the United States – are the growing and primary beneficiaries of the energy-producers’ wealth.

    The same dollars spent within North America have a very different effect. Canada and Mexico together constitute by far the largest export market for the United States. Over one third of our exports now go to our North American allies, compared to less than 5 percent to OPEC and less than one percent to the Russian Federation.

    Investment in Mexico’s Peninsula de Atasta, an ethanol plant in Iowa, or a hydroelectric plant in Quebec enriches customers for whom the United States is a primary source of both manufactured goods and of services, including tourism. A wealthier Mexico also means more visitors to the parks of Orlando, Anaheim or to Houston’s Galleria. Canadians, for their part, flock first to New York, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles or Florida when they have extra change to spend.

    So as he considers his options, President-elect Obama may want to consider this continental strategy as a means to create new wealth here and to strengthen our hand abroad. We know these proposals are radical, and will be subject to all sorts of opposition by well-organized pressure groups.

    But by focusing on our continental economy, the United States can begin facing the world not as another slowly declining European descended power but once again as a youthful, defiantly multi-racial and ascendant one.

    This piece originally appeared at Politico.com

    Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and is finishing a book on the American future. He is executive editor of www.newgeography.com. Mark Schill is the site’s managing editor and an associate at the Praxis Strategy Group.

    December 19, 2008

  • Up Next: The War of the Regions?

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    It’s time to throw away red, blue and purple, left and right, and get to the real and traditional crux of American politics: the battle for resources between the country’s many diverse regions. How President-elect Barack Obama balances these divergent geographic interests may have more to do with his long-term success than his ideological stance or media image. Personal charm is transitory; the struggle for money and jobs has a more permanent character.

    To succeed as president, Obama must find a way to transcend his own very specific geography – university dominated, liberal de-industrialized Chicago – and address the needs of regions whose economies still depend on agriculture, energy and industry. In the primaries, most of these went to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    The geographic concentration of manufacturing prepared by Praxis Strategy Group presents a particular complex roadmap for the new president. Although Indiana and Wisconsin top our list of states most dependant on manufacturing employment, the next four are either in the Great Plains, Iowa, or in the south, Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi. In fact eight of the top 13 industrial states on a per capita basis are located in the South; only one of these manufacturing hotbeds, North Carolina, supported the new president.

    In terms of industry, the auto industry represents the most difficult challenge. Great Lakes political leaders, like Michigan’s clueless Gov. Jennifer Granholm, now a top Obama advisor, will twist the new president’s arm to bail out the crippled U.S.-based auto manufacturers, essentially socializing the industry. Yet in bailing out Detroit, Obama could undermine a thriving, growing auto complex developing in the old Confederacy and along the southern rim of Midwest.

    Although also hit by the recession, companies like Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes and BMW have brought unprecedented prosperity to these areas, which include some of historically poorest regions of the country. This is also where many of the most fuel-efficient “green” vehicles in America are being produced. The workers they employ may not belong to the unions so influential among liberals, but their interests matter mightily to Democrats as well as Republicans who represent them.

    Energy issues may be even more challenging from a regional perspective. The nation’s fossil fuel resources are heavily concentrated in the west and South, led by Wyoming, Alaska, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, Montana, North Dakota and Kentucky. Sen. Obama only took one of these states, New Mexico. The new president’s statements against coal and other fossil fuels were not popular in areas where these provide not only reliable low cost energy but also well-paying jobs.

    Not just oil-riggers, heartland miners and coal companies have an interest in an expansive approach to energy policy. If enacted, Obama’s “cap and trade” proposals could raise the cost of Midwestern energy, largely coal-based, by between 20 to 40 percent, according to a recent study by Bernstein Research. This would create yet another disadvantage for U.S. manufacturers, particularly against largely unregulated competitors in developing countries.

    In contrast, reliable and affordable domestic energy supplies from all sources – including from nuclear facilities – would be a major boon manufacturers across the country. Obama must recognize that many states with coal and oil reserves also possess strong wind and bioenergy potential. He should favor expansion of both. The resulting lower cost electrical power could boost an incipient electric car industry that may be the last, best hope for hard-pressed General Motors.

    Here’s another case where regional politics could prove sticky for Obama. Any attempt to boost non-renewable energy supplies would run into opposition from the largely coastally-centered green lobby. These groups generally oppose virtually any fossil fuel development, and most remain hostile to nuclear power. While well-intentioned, increasingly restrictive environmental regulations on manufacturing could push production to parts of the world with dirtier industries and over reliance on shipping long distances. The net reduction in carbon emissions, as a result would seem somewhat ephemeral.

    The current recession and falling energy prices could provide political cover for Obama to shift his energy policies. Hard times have already eroded support for strict curbs on greenhouse gases in Europe and strong advocacy for carbon taxes clearly hurt the Liberals in the recent Canadian elections. A similar reaction could also emerge in this country, excepting the deepest blue coastal enclaves.

    Finally there remains one other regional constituency that must be addressed, that of the financial community. Our analysis shows securities and commodity trading industries to be regionally concentrated, with the largest clusters in greater New York, vice President-elect Biden’s home state of Delaware, followed by New Hampshire and Illinois. They are all now bedrock “blue states” and backed Obama generally by large margins.

    Yet this presents yet another regional dilemma. Simply put, the rest of the country detests Wall Street. They see the bailout benefiting big players in cities like New York or Chicago, but doing little for smaller banks who do much of the lending outside the big money centers. This sentiment cuts across party lines, particularly in the West and South, as the initial anti-bailout votes in the House show.

    All presidents face such regional challenges in governing this vast and diverse country. The weak politicians, like George W. Bush, tend to fall back on an ever-narrower band of regional alliances that, once threatened, easily break apart.

    Transformative leaders, like Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, learn to extend their appeal to as many industries and regions as possible. In the next four years, we will get to see what kind of leader Barack Obama intends to be.

    This article originally appeared at Politico.com

    Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University and executive editor of NewGeography.com. Mark Schill, a strategy consultant at the Praxis Strategy Group, is the site’s managing editor.