Business - Business News

POSTED: Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009

Bellingham area ranks high on Best Performing list

While Bellingham's economy continues to have some issues, it's good to read that it stacks up well compared to metro areas of a similar size.

Last week The Milken Institute released its Best Performing Cities index, which uses a variety of indicators to measure the economic vibrancy of a metro area. In this year's index, Bellingham ranked 13th out of 124 small-city metro areas, down five spots from the previous year, but still near the top 10 percent.

While using a variety of indicators, the report focuses on job creation and sustainability. In order to incorporate the quality of jobs being created, the report also looks at wage gains and technology concentration.

According to the report, Bellingham performed well compared to other metro areas in terms of five-year job growth and five-year wage growth, ranking in the top 20 in those categories. However, this area didn't do well in one-year job growth, showing a 2.6 percent decline between March 2008 and March 2009, ranking 70th out of the 124 metro areas. Bellingham also received decent marks for gross domestic product growth, particularly in the high-tech industry, ranking 25th highest.

The full report can be found at milkeninstitute.org. The Milken Institute is a publicly supported, non-partisan think tank trying to create a more democratic and efficient global economy

Looking at the overall report, some interesting trends jump out. Texas metro areas dominated the top of both the small and large city lists. Midland and Longview grabbed the top two spots on the small cities' list while Austin was at the top of the large cities' category. The authors of the report noted that areas with a heavy reliance on the oil and gas industry did well in both job retention and growth. The report also concluded that the metro areas with large housing bubbles and a reliance on durable manufacturing tended to fare the worst.

Among other local communities, Kennewick ranked sixth overall among small metro cities, while the Olympia metro area ranked seventh out of 200 large metro areas. Seattle ranked 17th best in the large cities list, while Tacoma came in 21st.

This report is a good measure these days, given the lack of economic bubbles that would typically send some communities to the top of the list. To me it shows which areas were hit hardest after the financial meltdown last fall. It's no surprise that Detroit, and much of Michigan, showed the least amount of economic vibrancy, but there are places like Memphis and Miami that are also near the bottom.

It'll be interesting to see whether Bellingham and other Washington communities will continue to do this well in the 2010 report. This year's report indicates Bellingham and Washington wasn't hit as hard early on in the recession. Next year's report might give some insight on whether we do get hit harder in the labor market, or if we're able to dodge much of the blow and maintain the jobs we have.