Best Cities 2016

When we look at how the U.S. economy is performing, we usually focus on the largest metropolitan areas. But some 29% of non-farm jobs in the U.S. are in small and midsize metro areas. And since they tend to be less economically diverse and more volatile, these metro areas often are where we can more clearly see the fissures in the economy — the sectors that are growing, and which are shrinking.  read more »

While speculation is mounting that they’re overheating, the tech boom is still creating jobs at a rapid pace in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, placing them atop our annual assessment of The Best Cities For Jobs for the third year in a row. A number of secondary tech centers are posting strong growth as well on the back of the boom, as well as spillover from Northern California as high prices push expanding companies and startups to locate elsewhere.  read more »

The methodology for the 2016 rankings largely corresponds to that used in previous years, which emphasizes the robustness of a region's growth both recently and over time, with a minor addition to mitigate the volatility that the Great Recession has introduced into the time series.  It allows the rankings to include all of the metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports monthly employment data. They are derived from three-month rolling averages of U.S.  read more »