Best U.S. Places for Business and Careers
May 21 -- These are the worst of times for many metro areas in America.
By dint of a 4 percent drop in tax receipts, deficits now total $95 billion for the 50 states, with California leading the way (a $31 billion shortfall), followed by New York ($12 billion).
A lot of it comes down to lost jobs: The national unemployment rate recently jumped to 6 percent, from less than 4 percent three years ago. But what's bad news for cities and job seekers may be a great opportunity for companies looking to lower their costs of doing business — as Toyota did in Huntsville, Ala. — and hire from a pool of talented workers.
To reflect these changing times, we changed the way we compile our ranking of Best Places for Business and Careers, turning to analysts at Economy.com, the West Chester, Pa.-based economic and financial research firm.
In this, our fifth annual survey, we still kept a careful eye on income and job growth. But because businesses are watching their expenses so scrupulously — and find it difficult to raise prices — we gave special attention to Economy.com's cost-of-doing-business index, which includes the prices of labor, energy, taxes and office space.
We also looked closely at the qualifications of the available pool of labor, taking into account each area's concentration of college graduates and Ph.D.s. For the first time our rankings also characterized the attractiveness of a region by figuring in crime rates, housing costs and net migration.
For detailed information on each of the 150 largest metro areas, go to www.forbes.com/bestplaces. There you will also find a ranking of 168 smaller metro areas, along with information about them.
1. Austin, Texas
Population: 1,313,000 Job Growth: 3.1 percent Income Growth: 5.8 percent Net Migration: 2.7 percent Cost of Doing Business Index 1: 94.1; Rank: 48 Housing Affordability Index 2: 133; Rank: 64 Educational Attainment3: 36.7; Rank: 9 Advanced Degrees4: 1,171; Rank: 9 Crime Rate5: 4,713; Rank: 74
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