Asheville, North Carolina #6 on Forbes’ Best Places For Business And Careers
Great article and encouraging statistics.
Snippets from the article at Forbes.com:
The economy shed 651,000 jobs in February and 4.4 million since the recession began in December 2007. Only a handful of metro areas have escaped falling employment over the past three months. Yet there are still some places out there that remain attractive to businesses.Keeping Raleigh company at the top are fellow Tar Heel State metros Durham (ranked third), Asheville (sixth), Wilmington (13th), Winston-Salem (18th) and Charlotte (19th).
On their criteria and data sources:
Our rankings looked at the 200 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., which range from the New York metro and its 11.7 million people to Olympia, Wash., with a population of 241,000. We examined each on 11 different criteria. Economic research firm Moody’s Economy.com supplied data on job growth over the past five years and projections through 2011. Economy.com also provided business and living cost data as well as income growth and migration trends.We also turned to Bert T. Sperling, city researcher and co-author of Cities Ranked & Rated for some labor supply and quality of life information. Sperling furnished data on college attainment, crime rates, local colleges and cultural and recreational opportunities in the area.
In a nod to the current economic climate, we added two new categories this year: projected job growth and subprime mortgages as a percentage of total originations over a three-year period. This change helped boost several metros in the rankings.
On the recession and the promising future of these top cities:
The current recession is too deep and widespread for even our best-rated cities to escape damage. Yet when things do turn around, expect many places ranked at the top to be at the head of the pack, notes Marisa Di Natale, an economist at Economy.com.“[These top ranked cities] all have a lot of high-tech investment,” she says. “We think that is one of the first things that comes back once the economy does recover.”
Check out specific Asheville business statistics at Forbes.com.
And of course, we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t recommend checking out our handy Asheville real estate search tool. Maps, driving directions, the works.
