slides: Providence Ranked 148th Best Performing City For Business

Saturday, December 07, 2013

Zeke Wright, GoLocalProv Contibutor

Providence ranks 148th of the 200 large metropolitan areas in the United States for creating and sustaining jobs, according to the Milken Institute's Best-Performing Cities index released this week.

Short-term wage and salary growth have been comparatively stagnant in Providence. But the metropolitan area saw gains in high-tech sector growth over a five-year period, according to the survey.

"The city of Providence continues to evolve as innovative new industries grow here,” said Kathryn Dunkelman, spokeswomen for the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. “Along with public and private partners, we continue to focus on investments in technology and innovation and recently took the next step in defining our state's unique business to business attributes through GreaterRI.com.”

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The city's showing slipped slightly from 2012, when it sat at 130th.

See How New England's Cities Rank In The Slides Below

“We fully anticipate our joint efforts to marry research, technology, and the retention of talented local graduates and entrepreneurs to help improve our ranking, and more importantly our economy, in the future," Dunkelman said in response to the new survey.

Highlights and lowlights in economic survey

One highlight for the capital city came in its five-year high-technology gross domestic product growth component, measuring the high-tech sector's output, which rose year-over-year from 71st to 47th place.

But Providence dropped relative to the national average in other indices. The city's one-year wage and salary growth rank fell from 63rd to 122nd, while its one-year high-tech growth plummeted, falling from 8th place to 147th.

Job and GDP data came from the recent 2012 fiscal year, while wage and salary figures were taken from up to 2011.

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Survey methodology

The Milken Institute's “best-performing” cities survey shows where jobs are being created and sustained in metropolitan areas across the nation. The index uses measures of job, wage and technology performance to rank the nation's 200 large metropolitan areas and 179 smaller metros.

The survey's authors said technology and energy were the biggest forces behind the best performers.

"Job creation is the key measure of long-term economic vitality of America's urban areas," according to Ross DeVol, the chief research officer of the Milken Institute and one of the report's authors. "Many of our financial and social challenges can best be addressed by developing local strategies to foster high-quality jobs, and our Best-Performing Cities are showing the way," DeVol said in a prepared statement.

Unlike other "best places" rankings, the institute's survey does not use quality-of-life metrics, such as commute times, housing costs, or crime rates. In the index, employment growth is weighted most heavily due to its importance to community vitality, while wage and salary growth measures the quality of jobs.

Other regions in New England

Geographic areas are divided along the terms and definitions used by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In the Providence-New Bedford-Fall River region, that population amounted to 1,601,374.

Among the best performers in the Northeast, the Cambridge-Newton-Framingham region in Massachusetts topped New England at 23rd, down from 8th in 2012.

Boston-Quincy kept its 46th ranking, while the Peabody region northeast of Boston fell from 17th to 50th this year. Worcester came next in New England at 63rd.

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Related Slideshow: New England’s Best Performing Cities 2013: Milken Institute Study

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