Manufacturing is often viewed as a massive anchor to regional job growth. Here’s two lists of metro areas that not only withstood the national job hemorrhaging of 2001-2003, but they are actually growing.
Growth by percent:
Read more manufacturing analysis in as part of our Best Cities Rankings: Is Manufacturing Weighing Down the U.S. Economy?
Growth by number of jobs:
The Contrasting Views.
One of the most common topics on blog sites and newsgroups here and around the world is “What does the end of cheap oil mean to the future of our cities?”
As usual, those who combine a yearning for catastrophe with a hatred of the motor car and the suburban lifestyle have leapt to their own “self evident” conclusion. They are convinced the suburbs are no longer viable and will be abandoned and left to decay into extensive ghost towns, home only to vermin and weeds.
All those millions of of people who inhabit the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and even Auckland and Christchurch, will up-stakes and surge into downtown neighbourhoods where they will take up residence in high rise slabs from which they will be able to walk and cycle to work – or of course catch their bus or train. As James Howard Kunstler puts somewhat gleefully:
“The US economy is crumbling because the way we conduct the activities of daily life is insane relative to our circumstances. We’ve spent sixty years ramping up a suburban living arrangement that has suddenly entered a state of failure, and all its accessories and furnishings are failing in concert. The far-flung McHouse tracts are becoming both useless and worthless in the face of gasoline prices that will never be cheap again. The strip malls and office “parks” are following the residential real estate off a cliff. The retail tenants of all those places are hemorrhaging customers who have maxed out every last credit card. The lack of business is now leading to substantial layoffs. The airline industry is dying and will probably cease to exist in its familiar form in 24 months. The trucking industry is dying, threatening the entire just-in-time distribution system of things that even people with little money to spend still need, like food.”
All this because US gas prices may soon reach $5/gallon. We New Zealanders, like many others round the world, have been living with $5/gallon petrol for years, and have even survived $10/gallon petrol for close on two years. Yet Kunstler and many like-minded catastrophists state with total confidence that once gas hits $10/gallon all Americans will simply stop driving – and start rebuilding their cities.
Fortunately, the simple sums suggest otherwise. Look up the population of your nearest city. Look up the housing replacement rate, and figure out how long it will take to transform present day Seattle or Auckland into a remake of 19th Century London. Then think about the costs of all the new buildings, all the new infrastructure, and the lost asset value of all those abandoned suburbs.
Many of us believe that long before anyone has to consider such a drastic reshaping of our built environment new technologies and some minor behavioural shifts will make such disruption totally unnecessary.
The alarmists respond that we do not have the time.
However, we can develop new technologies and produce new products at high speed if we have to. Consider the rapid development of technology during WWII – jet engines, radar, V2s, computing and much more. By the end of WWII it was taking only five days to build a Liberty Ship in the US dockyards. When I first went on the Internet in 1994 there were only 70,000 of us in the club. Now there are over 1.6 billion of us.
Off course we have the time. After decades of paying about $5/gallon for our petrol, the NZ urban landscape looks much like America’s although the average vehicle size may be somewhat smaller.
Now that we are paying $10/gallon for petrol, sales of small, more efficient, cars are booming, and a few more people are cycling to work, car-pooling or taking public transport. But, hardly anyone, except our local Katastrophists, are talking about giving up their autos altogether or proposing that we rebuild our cities within the constraints of Extremist Smart Growth urban form.
The most obvious change in behaviour is a boom in drive-away theft from petrol stations. Barrier arms or similar hardware will soon put a stop to this.
Our Densities are Higher and uses more Mixed than in the US.
Since the seventies, New Zealand has generally had ‘enabling’ Urban Planning rules which have allowed mixes of high, medium and low density housing and mixed uses of retail etc. Lot sizes have ranged in size but there would hardly be any suburbs built exclusively for single family homes on 1 acre lots. Consequently Auckland’s density per sq mile is about double that of most US cities of similar age and size. But we are already “densified” and further density increases are being strongly resisted because the kerbside parking is already in short supply and inner city districts are noticing the increased congestion, noise and loss of amenity.
One effect of $10/gallon gas is that public transport prices are rising steeply too, and Councils are raising rates to keep up with the necessary subsidies. Some people seem to think that public transport runs on fairy dust.
Our auto ownership is about the same as the US, we drive somewhat shorter distances on average but generally spend more time driving up and down hills.
Of course we are now grizzling and complaining about the price of petrol. But the US need hardly fear any massive revolution while their gas remains at only half the price of ours.
US consumers are reacting to a dramatic change in price. Many of those cyclists are still prepared to pay more for their litre of bottled water than they are prepared to pay for a litre of gas.
A Force for Decentralisation
Americans are responding to this change in price by reducing their driven mileage. (Americans drove 11billion fewer miles in March 2008 than in March 2007. ) Significantly the most dramatic reductions are taking place in the rural areas. My own experience suggests this is because the reductions are much easier to achieve in rural life. We tend to co-operate when it comes to long trips, we can more freely plan our times of day, and we spend no time at traffic lights, in gridlock, or looking for parking spaces. When gas prices are high such waste is infuriating.
Hence, while none of us can be sure about future human behaviour, my own research and my own experience, suggests that high gas prices are a further force for decentralisation. Kunstler is sure we shall all rush to the city centre. Some people will, of course, but they will be watching many households moving in the opposite direction.
Freeman Dyson’s book “The Sun the Genome and the Internet” identifies many present and future forces for decentralisation. My current position is that high gas prices are more likely to decentralise more people than centralise them. But no human behaviour is uniform. Some people will go downtown and some – probably more – will go to rural centres. Many will go to more remote locations for “the sea change, the tree change and the ski change.”
Some people are convinced that this outmigration will be strongly resisted by the existing folk and even more so by people like me who will want to protect our piece of paradise. Not so – as long as the planners don’t force us all to crowd into high density settlements with no room to swing a cat or grow our vegetables. And they will probably try.
When we moved to Northland eleven years ago there were few people in the Kaiwaka area and services were basic. Now we have a French restaurant, an Italian bread shop, a bundle of local newspapers, excellent butchers and delicatessens, the school rolls are growing and the medical services are better and nearer and so on.
Most New Zealanders of my generation grew up in the country and we are returning to our roots. The media like to make much of a few hopeless cases who want to “de-moo” the cows and so on but I have never had any problems of that kind and frankly we are the ones who are driving many of the new rural crops such as olives, wine, truffles etc. and the new tourism establishments and so on.
The Iron Horse will prevail
For most of human history people have had access to private point-to-point history using things called horses, camels, mules, asses, lamas or whatever. Christ rode into Jerusalem on the current equivalent of a VW. Then, in the 19th C trains and trams allowed the development of far-flung cities in which large numbers of people could get into the central city for work. (The Manhattan model). The trouble was the horses, which dominated short distance urban trips, caused dreadful pollution of air water and soil, not to mention the stench at a NY gridlocked intersection in mid-summer.
The car was a miracle. It got rid of the pollution, and released huge amounts of food to feed people.
In 1910, 40% of the grain grown in the US went to feed horses. This “extra” grain fed the population explosion which followed.
So the car the was the real “Iron Horse” – not the train.
Modern trains are at a higher level of technology than the nineteenth century trains but their new technologies only increase their speed and reduce their pollution. They do not overcome the fact that trains cannnot provide the flexibility of rubber-on-road transport such as buses, cars, and taxis – or indeed, of the family horse.
Anyhow, the rubber-on-road system is about to go through a development phase which will leave the train in (on) its tracks, or stuck at the station.
The next generation of cars will be a computer with four wheels.
Many people in many different research centres are working on new technologies which will mean you will be able to drive your car to the motorway where it will link to a position over an underground cable which will guide the car – you will be able to take your hands off the wheel and read, and even use your cellphone. The same cable may use an induction system to supply power to your electric drive system. (You will of course charge your electric car up in your garage overnight).
Then, when you get near to your destination you will put your hands back on the wheel, leave the motorway, go back on to the surface street and complete the trip. If there is no parking you will get out of the car and tell it to go park itself and it will. When you leave your business you will phone it up to tell it to come and pick you up and it will.
That it what we mean when we say the train is 19th century technology – it is stuck and cannot make the leap into the 21st century.
No one can be sure that this total package will prevail but there are so many options being developed that cars will certainly leap to new levels of effciency and effectiveness over the next few years. If this seems like science fantasy image convincing your great-grandparents of the reality of modern computers on your desk and the power of the internet.
Behavioural change.
There will be some changes of behaviour at the margins. People who are tired of congestion may make their move to the regional centres earlier than they might have, while their children might move to a downtown apartment.
But the technology will change much more rapidly than urban form and land use can change. If need be we shall electrify the private vehicle fleet and supply nuclear power and the car will be cheaper to run than ever.
There will be more telecommuting.
There will be more hi tech car pooling using GPS, iPhones and the Internet.
A few more will cycle and ride in trains and buses but the changes in travel mode will not be dramatic.
The worst thing that can happen is that our cities move from being “Opportunity Cities” to “Panic Cities” that insist on controlling where and how their people should live, based on knee-jerk reactions to change and a total lack of confidence in people’s ability to innovate and adapt.
Owen McShane is a Resource Management Consultant based in New Zealand
Where is the growth in Wisconsin? The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel checked in last week with a glowing review of the recent city census numbers. Our friend, Milwaukee native, and former Playboy Magazine editor Bob Carr sends his reaction:
Milwaukee is having to put quite a spin on the latest census figures. A recent Journal-Sentinel article trumpets the the city’s decade-long population plateauing as a sign of “steadiness.” Cities losing the most population in Wisconsin included Whitefish Bay, Wauwatosa, West Allis and Brown Deer. Guess what they are — Milwaukee suburbs. With the city losing people at the edges, the newspaper was lucky enough to find someone who had actually moved from Whitefish Bay to Milwaukee to help take the sting out.
Here’s a rundown of the recent population trends in the State of Wisconsin.
Our comprehensive annual guide to which places are thriving — even in an economy many consider in recession.
By Joel Kotkin and Michael Shires
What a difference a year and a deflated housing bubble makes. Inc.com’s 2008 list of the Best Cities for Doing Business, created in conjunction with Newgeography.com, uncovered some of the most dramatic changes since we started this ranking back in 2004. Five major trends were immediately revealed; trends that are shaping the business environment right now across the country and will continue to over the next several years.
The list focuses on short- and long-term job growth. It tells us precisely not just where jobs are being created — a sure sign of economic vitality — but where the momentum is shifting. For entrepreneurs, this suggests what may be the best places to locate or expand your business.
The Bubble and the Fall of the Sunshine Boys
Since the list’s inception, Florida has been the standout state in each of our size-based categories — small, midsize, and large. But not this year. Now, Florida is the state that fell back to earth. Stung by plummeting construction employment and the mortgage finance crisis, many of our former highfliers across the state are hurting. Ft. Lauderdale, last year’s No. 3 among the large metros, dropped 24 places. West Palm Beach, No. 6 last year, dropped to No. 41. And Jacksonville, No. 12 in the large category, fell seven places.
The fall, however, was much more devastating for the smaller communities, such as Ft. Myers-Cape Coral. The area ranked No. 1 last year in the midsize category but plummeted 42 places this year. Lakeland-Winter Haven, down 45 places, Deltona-Daytona Beach, down 49, Palm Bay-Melbourne, down 53, and Bradentown, down 65, fared even worse. In even smaller towns, the scenario was bleaker. Ft. Walton Beach dropped 85 places and Naples-San Marco Island, No. 4 last year, plummeted 105 places, the most of any metro in our survey.
“We’re the foreclosure capital of America,” admits Bill Valenti, founder and CEO of Florida Gulf Bank, founded in 2001 in Fort Myers on the once booming west coast of the Sunshine State. Many of the people that moved into the area bought relatively expensive homes expecting continued asset appreciation to make up for the fact that many jobs in the area pay modest or low wages. Now the area has seen median house prices drop from $320,000 to $223,000 in two years. “Something had to give and it did.”
Although Florida’s fall was by far the biggest, the housing collapse has also humbled high fliers in other states as well. Last year’s No. 1 among the large metros, Las Vegas, dropped seven places while No. 2, Phoenix, dropped 12; the other big Arizona city, Tucson, No. 12 last year among the midsize category, fell 34 places. Midsize Reno, No. 8 last year and previously No. 1, dropped 21 places.
Outside Florida, the sharpest pain was felt in California. Property-driven economies in Oakland, Santa Ana-Anaheim, Sacramento, and Riverside-San Bernardino all dropped by around 20 places or more. The big enchilada, Los Angeles, fell another eight places from its already mediocre 48th ranking last year. Almost every city below LA on the list is either a Rustbelt disaster or a perennially underperforming Northeastern big city.
If this trend continues to play out, California’s problems could be worse than those in Florida. When the bubble corrects, Florida still can boast relatively low costs, no income taxes, and a favorable business climate in addition to warm weather. By contrast, California’s land use laws, high taxes, and massive $20 billion state deficit don’t bode well for the future of the state, suggests Bill Watkins, executive director of the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Economic Forecast Project. “There’s a lot of uncertainty,” he says. “If you are expanding or starting a business, there’s not a lot of reason now to come to California.”
The Texas Ascendancy Continues
While California is struggling, says Los Angeles-based architect David Hidalgo, Texas is thriving. Hidalgo just completed a large Latino-themed shopping center in Ft. Worth and sees more of his business coming from the Lone Star State. “That’s where the opportunities are,” he says. “Its costs, regulation, and infrastructure drive you to Texas.”
Our rankings certainly bear out Hidalgo’s assertion. In many ways Texas has become the new Florida, dominating the top of the list. Among the largest metro areas, a remarkable five of the top 12 best places to do business are from the Lone Star State, ranging from Austin (No. 2) and Houston (No. 4) to Ft. Worth (No. 9) and Dallas (No. 12). Among the small cities, Midland, now ranks No. 1, up 10 places from last year. Odessa and Longview, both big gainers, round out the Texas stronghold on the top portion of the list.
Texas’ boom reflects solid growth in a variety of industries, from energy and agriculture to manufacturing and trade. “The big difference for Texas is we did not rely on the real estate bubble,” suggests Bill Gilmer, a Houston-based economist for the Federal Reserve. “Our gains are based on jobs elsewhere and that has insulated us pretty well.”
Here Come the Carolinas
The other big winners this year are concentrated in the Carolinas. Like Texas, these two states are being fed by varied economies. Certainly, technology companies have been a factor here, many of them in Raleigh-Cary, N.C., which ranked No. 1, up six places, on our list of largest metro areas. Finance has played a large part, too, with Charlotte (No. 5), up 18 places, emerging as the big but low-cost, family-friendly alternative to the New York financial center.
Demographics are a big part of the story here. Our analysis from Praxis Strategy Group shows that Raleigh and Charlotte, are among the biggest magnets for young, educated workers, particularly those in their late 20s and early 30s.
“People are coming here for basic reasons and taking their families with them,” observes Sociologist John D. Kasarda, director of the Kenan Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “They are coming for jobs, particularly from the Northeast, and an affordable quality of life.”
To some extent, Kasarda adds, Raleigh and Charlotte are well-known success stories, but he points to wider, less documented successes in the region. Driven by gains in tourism, logistics, manufacturing, and technology, more and more midsize Carolina cities are joining the party. These emerging players include Charleston, S.C. (No. 6); Asheville, N.C. (No. 7); Durham, N.C. (No. 11); Greenville, S.C. (No. 18); and Columbia, S.C. (No. 19). These cities made considerable gains over last year and should be seriously considered for new business opportunities.
The Pacific Northwest-Intermountain West Surge Continues
Like last year, the northwestern quarter of the country did very well. Three of the top 11 big metro areas in the region between the foggy West Coast and the high mountains, including Salt Lake City (No. 3), Seattle (No. 10) and Portland, Ore. (No. 11), all gained ground. This ascendancy was even more evident at the midsize level, with the success of cities such as Provo-Orem, Utah (No. 1); Tacoma, Wash. (No. 2); Ogden, Utah (No. 8); Boise, Idaho (No. 12); and Spokane, Wash. (No. 14). Small cities, including St. George, Utah (No. 2), Coeur d’Alene, Idaho (No. 3), Bend, Ore. (No. 7) and Grand Junction, Colo. (No. 9), also saw gains.
In many ways, the gains here parallel those in the Carolinas. Places like Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Portland, according to the Praxis Strategy Group analysis, all continue to gain educated residents from other parts of the country. The lure, in many cases, lies with strong and diverse job growth and low housing prices compared to coastal California and the Northeast.
Seattle continued its strong growth, notes economist Paul Sommers, due largely to the success of two companies — Microsoft and Boeing. These companies have been expanding, providing high-wage jobs, and attracting skilled talent to the area. Another key advantage in this high energy cost environment: the Northwest’s prodigious supplies of cheap and clean hydroelectric power. This helps everyone, from people building airplane parts to dot-com firms sucking copious amounts of electricity to run their servers.
Some of the other areas in this vast region benefit from what might be called “grey power.” Older, often more educated and affluent, baby boomers are flocking to the smaller towns and cities in this region, bringing capital and, in some cases, entrepreneurial know-how. Like the Carolinas, the area between the foggy Pacific Coast and the Rockies seems poised for sustained growth.
Revenge of the Superstars?
Perhaps the most surprising shift in the 2008 rankings, and in some ways the most subtle, has been the improvement in a host of very expensive, highly regulated urban regions that Wharton economist Joe Gyourko calls “superstar cities.” For many years these cities — New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Boston — have clustered at the bottom of our growth-oriented list, all suffering big losses from the 2000-2001 dot-com bust.
This year has seen the revenge of the “superstars.” Although not surpassing Texas, the Carolinas or the Northwest, these elite cities have made a strong showing. In just one year, New York (No. 22) propelled itself 21 places while San Francisco (No. 29) and San Jose (No. 33) gained at least 25 places, and Boston (No. 40) went up 19 places.
The main reason for this modest, but significant turnaround, suggests David Shulman, former managing director of Lehman Brothers, is simple: the powerful financial sector expansion of the past few years. These are all cities where big money plays a big role, either financing new dot-com start-ups or simply serving as the places where multimillion-dollar bonuses are spent on a host of high-priced services.
Yet, Shulman notes, these gains may be short lived. The impact of the subprime and mortgage meltdown hit first in places like California and Florida, and is only beginning to affect the major financial centers. Spurred by the credit crisis, Shulman fears new regulations will limit financial innovation and wipe out whole sections of industries like mortgage-backed securities and some derivatives.
“A lot of these gains are going to rewind,” suggests Shulman. “New York is losing jobs as we speak. Anyplace with exposure to financial services is going to suffer over the next two years.”
Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and executive editor of Newgeography.com
Michael Shires, Ph.D. is a professor at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy
This year’s rankings continue the methodology used last year, which emphasizes the robustness of a region’s growth and allows the rankings to include all of the metropolitan statistical areas for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports monthly employment data. They are derived from three-month rolling averages of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics “state and area” unadjusted employment data reported from November 1996 to January 2008.
The data reflect the North American Industry Classification System categories, including total nonfarm employment, manufacturing, financial services, business and professional services, educational and health services, information, retail and wholesale trade, transportation and utilities, leisure and hospitality, and government.
“Large” areas include those with a current nonfarm employment base of at least 450,000 jobs. “Midsize” areas range from 150,000 to 450,000 jobs. “Small” areas have as many as 150,000 jobs. Two communities in last year’s top midsize MSA group grew enough that they are now considered large MSAs: Birmingham, Ala., and Oklahoma City. In the smaller MSAs, Asheville, N.C., moved from the small to midsize category.
This year’s rankings use four measures of growth to rank all areas for which full data sets were available from the past 10 years — 335 regions in total. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, no longer reports employment detail for MSAs with employment levels less than 30,000 in its monthly models (a total of 59 MSAs were dropped). As a result, this year’s rankings can be directly compared to the 2007 rankings for MSAs for the large and midsize categories, but there are some adjustments needed for year-to-year comparisons in small MSA category. In instances where the analysis refers to changes in ranking order, these adjustments have been taken into account.
The index is calculated from a normalized, weighted summary of: 1) recent growth trend: the current and prior year’s employment growth rates, with the current year emphasized (two points); 2) mid-term growth: the average annual 2002-2007 growth rate (two points); 3) long-term trend: the sum of the 2002-2007 and 1996-2001 employment growth rates multiplied by the ratio of the 1996-2001 growth rate over the 2002-2007 growth rate (two points); and 4) current year growth (one point).
Forget New York and San Francisco. With beautiful scenery, skilled workers, and affordable housing, smaller cities are luring companies in droves.
They may not make a big splash nationally, but small metro areas continue to dominate the top ranks of Inc.com’s Best Cities rankings. This year, for example, 18 of the top 25 cities are small metros.
We decided to take a look at what makes these places tick by focusing on one of them. St. George, Utah, has a lock on first or second place for the third year in a row. St. George is the bustling population and commercial center of Utah’s Dixie, a nickname given to the area when Brigham Young persuaded Mormon pioneers to grow cotton and wine grapes and harvest silk for export to the Civil War-torn northern states.
The cotton plants, grapevines and mulberry bushes largely are gone, but the area overall is thriving. Nestled near Zion and Bryce National Parks, St. George has been attracting visitors and retirees for decades. But increasingly, the new houses lining the red-bluffed valleys are not occupied by those at the end of their productive lives; they are being snatched up by younger people and families anxious to take advantage of economic opportunities in a lovely setting. The population has doubled every decade in the last three.
But it’s not just scenery that attracts. This is a community with a strong sense of pride and connection with its past. And unlike many attractive communities, this one still wants to grow — and has done so by appealing to companies from giant Wal-Mart (which has a distribution center here) and Skywest to entrepreneurial firms who are filling the spacious, orderly industrial parks in the region.
St. George also is taking advantage of its location. With easy access to I-15, between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, notes Scott Hirschi, director of the Washington County Economic Development Council, it’s within a day’s semi-truck ride from almost the entire West Coast. At its current pace, Washington County is expected to grow to between 600,000 or 700,000 people by 2050.
In some small metros, as shown by the dominance of Texas cities in the overall rankings, the resurgence is due to the fact that the pillars of the economy — food, energy, and manufacturing — are in high demand in the global economy. For others it’s the presence of a university or college, the beautiful scenery and abundance of recreation activities, the proximity to a large metro area, or the position within a multi-polar urban complex. In places like Bend, Ore., or Bellingham, Wash., a combination of factors — beautiful settings, movement of skilled workers and entrepreneurs — has come together to create a robust crucible for attracting new talent and new businesses.
Affordability is also a critical factor. St. George is joined this year near the top of the rankings by its intermountain neighbors Salt Lake City and Provo. So, it seems that Utah’s strong and diverse job growth and low housing prices — at least compared to California — continue as a draw for people seeking more affordable communities ideal for raising families and growing businesses.
“St. George is the last small, snow-free community as you travel east from California’s Pacific Coast,” says the town’s development director, Scott Hirschi. “And, we have no gambling here which appeals to people that are looking for a family-friendly community.”
Delore Zimmerman is president and CEO of Praxis Strategy Group and publisher of Newgeography.com
The answer may surprise you.
Ever since we started ranking the Best Cities for Doing Business in 2004, the bottom rung of the rankings has been largely dominated by older industrial cities where factories have long been abandoned and once booming economies have dried up. The 2008 list bears this sobering fact; among the largest regions surveyed, Detroit sits on the bottom at No. 66, with Warren Troy-Farmington Hills, Mich., Cleveland, Providence, R.I., Philadelphia, and the New York twins — Rochester and Buffalo — doing only slightly better.
The same pattern can be seen on the lists of midsize and small cities, where the bottom rankings consist largely of former industrial towns along the Great Lakes belt, including Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Dayton, Ohio, falls last at No. 96, lying at the bottom of the midsize list of cities. Among the small metros, Battle Creek, Mich., languishes at No. 173, with Michigan cities Saginaw and Flint doing only slightly better.
So given this persistent underperformance, is manufacturing weighing down the U.S. economy? The answer may surprise you. Even though the industrial towns dominated by what used to be called the Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) and their suppliers have been devastated by slumping sales, a host of other manufacturing regions have emerged as strong performers. For the most part, the largest beneficiaries of these changes are located either in the Intermountain West — the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, and the Sun Belt region stretching across the southern bottom of the country. Here, U.S. car makers are not well represented and smaller communities with a host of specialized industrial companies have expanded in the face of tough times.
For example, large metros, such as Las Vegas (No. 8), Houston (No. 3) and Salt Lake City (No. 4), have attracted specialized industrial companies from high-cost, high-regulation locales like California, including aerospace, electronics, and industrial equipment. All these areas have experienced industrial job growth since 2000; Las Vegas alone has seen its number of manufacturing jobs grow by more than 30 percent.
But much of the action is in smaller areas. Many of them, like Midland, Texas, (No. 1); Longview, Texas, (No. 11); and Morgantown, W.Va., (No. 15), are tied to energy production. Such places have experienced 15 percent or more industrial job growth since 2000.
Another hot spot is in the Great Plains. Many cities in the region have attracted sophisticated manufacturing firms in technology, farm machinery, and electronics as well as an expanding number of energy-based companies ranging from oil, gas, and coal to wind power. Grand Forks and Fargo, N.D., No. 56 and No. 28 respectively, have experienced a quiet industrial boom, increasing their manufacturing jobs by more than 14 percent since 2000.
Already home to numerous agricultural implement firms, the largest manufacturer in Grand Forks is LM Glasfiber, a Danish manufacturer of propeller blades for windmills. Since the North Dakota office opened in 1999, it has expanded from 20 to 900 employees. Plant Manager Ralph Sperrazza says he appreciates the loyalty and dedication of the employee base, many of whom are returnees from larger metropolitan areas such as Minneapolis.
One effect of LM, local economic development officials reveal, has been a notable tightening of the labor market and an increase in wages in Grand Forks. The same result, notes North Dakota State Economist Larry Leistritz, is occurring elsewhere in the region as other core industries, ranging from energy and office furniture to farm equipment, have enjoyed rapid growth.
“These are the best times we’ve seen in many decades,” Leistritz beams. “And it is being felt broadly across the entire society.”