Monday, October 19, 2009

The West is not the Best.

Some interesting stuff on CNN.Money.com about the 50 Best Places to Start a Business.

What's most interesting is there isn't a single location in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado or Idaho.

The closest locations are Missoula, MT, pop. 107,320; Billings, MT, pop. 152,005; and Logan, UT, pop. 125,070.

Exploring the site further, I find that Bend is listed in the "Fastest Small Business Growth" list. (2004 to 2007). I suppose fastest isn't always best, not to mention this was during the boom, and we all knew that.

Rank Metro area Small business growth rate # of small businesses
(1-49 employees)
1 Kingsport, TN 43.7% 6,087
2 St. George, UT 29.8% 4,224
3 Provo, UT 23.0% 10,525
4 Bend, OR 22.6% 6,554
5 Palm Coast, FL 22.4% 1,888
6 Boise City, ID 19.0% 17,586
7 Coeur d'Alene, ID 16.5% 4,645
8 Prescott, AZ 16.0% 6,472
9 Grand Junction, CO 15.8% 4,830
10 Phoenix, AZ 15.1% 87,951


If you click Bend; you find the following info:

Bend, OR

Bend business statistics
Business Climate City stats Best Places Average.
Employer establishments with 1-49 employees
(2007) 6,554 27,126.98
Small business growth rate
(2004-2007) 23% 5.92%
State business tax climate ranking
(out of 50 states) 9 N/A
Percentage of population with bachelor's degree
(ages 25-34) 27.6% 33.48%
Violent crime
(rate per 100,000 inhabitants, 2007) 221 393.34
Property crime
(rate per 100,000 inhabitants, 2007) 3,426.8 3158.51
DEMAND City stats Best Places average
Population growth
(2003-2008) 23% 7.84%
Per-capita income
(2007) $35,057 $36,545.24
Per-capita income growth
(2002-2007) 25% 27.66%
GDP (in millions)
(2006) $6,011 59,299.44
GDP growth
(2001-2006) 57% 38.97%
COSTS City stats Best Places average
Average hourly wage
(2008) 18.54 $18.35
Housing foreclosure rate
(first half of 2009) 33 1,070.14
Median rent
(2009, for a 2-bedroom housing unit) $783 $778.80
Housing price-to-income (HPI) ratio
(first quarter of 2009) 3% 1.70%
Long-term HPI ratio
(20-year average, 1984-2004) 2.05 % 1.65%
HPI deviation from long-term average
58% 1.47%
All statistics are for the full Metropolitan Statistical Area. For a complete list of data sources, see "How we picked the Best Places."

From the November 2009 issue

Pretty interesting stuff. Not sure I've seen it gathered all in one place like this.

They have our "Metro Area" population as 158,456,which is higher than I expected, but fits what I've always heard: that a metro area population is usually about double the city proper.

Taking out the growth rates, it's also interesting how average we really are in so many statistics, Rents and Hourly Wages and Per Capita Income, for instance.

Higher property crime, but lower violent crime.

Lower percent of college grads.

So in summary, fastest isn't always bestest?

1 comment:

Broofa said...

Hey Dunc, like you said, interesting stuff.

So... what're the odds I can convince you to start adding links to your source material on stuff like this. I'd like to check out the original CNN.Money page, but it'd be easier if I didn't have to Google for it.