Monday, December 20, 2010

Richmond VA Ranks 7th Nationally for Marketwatch "Best Cities for Business 2010"

By Russ Britt, MarketWatch
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — It takes a resilient economy to ride through the Great Recession — and it doesn’t hurt to have the world’s most powerful government in your backyard.
Both of those could apply only to Washington, D.C., as the nation’s capital rose to the very top of MarketWatch’s 2010 annual ranking of the Best Cities for Business, beating out such cities as Omaha, Neb., Boston and Des Moines, Iowa.

Washington has made the most out of having the U.S. government, a very large customer for any company, to keep it chugging during the tough times. But the region also has seen massive expansion in suburban towns in Virginia and Maryland over the years that has boosted its economy.

MARKETWATCH SPECIAL REPORT:BEST U.S. CITIES FOR BUSINESS THE TOP 10Washington, DC An ability to be resilient in tough times, aided by its proximity to the world’s most powerful government helped vault Washington D.C. to the top of MarketWatch’s 2010 list of U.S. “Best Cities for Business.”

“Washington’s been adding a tremendous number of jobs for a number of years,” said Kevin Klowden, a managing economist at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, Calif. Klowden and other institute researchers recently performed their own study on the best cities for business and ranked Washington high on their list as well, sixth overall and tops among major metropolitan regions.

In the fourth year of doing the study, MarketWatch found cities that might have ranked higher in years past, but fell down the list as they continued to suffer the ill effects from the 2008 economic plunge. The strong truly survived, as those that performed well in the 2010 study proved their mettle under a rigorous test in a number of new categories.
The nation’s capital wasn’t at the very top of the class in MarketWatch’s study on how cities fared this past year, but Washington was solid in virtually all metrics checked and benefited from the addition of some new categories.

MarketWatch took a hard look at how cities have tried to contain their jobless rates in the past year and how they have done from the time the economic boom reached its apex in 2006 to today.
The statistics proved revealing and surprising, as a number of metro areas that normally would rank high in boom times such as Bridgeport, Conn., and San Jose, Calif., were well down the list because of low economic stability rankings. In fact, California did poorly in general, with six of its cities in the bottom 10.

How they scored Scores of all 102 cities in MarketWatch annual survey. Company score measures the concentration of businesses within a metro area according to several gauges. Economic score looks at a number of metrics, including unemployment, job growth, population growth, personal income and local GDP.

Here are the Top Ten:

Rank City TotalScore
1 Washington 1100
2 Omaha 1072
3 Boston 1071
4 Des Moines 1057
5 Minneapolis 997
6 Denver 980
7 Richmond 957
8 New York 950
9 Harrisburg 939
10 Seattle 932


Plus, the MarketWatch survey added four new metrics, bringing the total to 14. Part of that included an extra data point on unemployment and one on personal income growth, each of which are designed to give a better picture on how various regions have performed during the recession. There also were new metrics pertaining to regional GDPs, with a focus on tourism and military contributions to local economies.

Washington beat out 101 other cities for the honor, as MarketWatch looked at all metro areas with a population of 500,000 or more, ranging from New York to the smallest city included in the ranking, Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. Durham is a new addition, having crossed the 500,000 threshold last year.
Here’s what they said about Richmond:

7. Richmond, Va. — 957 points: Richmond continues to reap the rewards of being in fairly close proximity to this year’s top finisher, Washington, D.C. After a one-year hiatus from the top 10 last year, Richmond came back to claim a spot once again.
Richmond boasts the best of both worlds; it’s about an hour and a half to metro Washington by car, yet it’s a lower-cost, relatively smaller city. When times are hard, it doesn’t necessarily feel the pain as much.
Richmond scored well, particularly in its concentration of S&P 500 companies. But it ranks low in tourism and personal income. While it has a large number of companies for its size, it didn’t have a particularly strong showing in creating jobs over the last year, or the last four years. Still, it’s unemployment rate over the last four years remained relatively low.
“We didn’t have as much of a recovery, but we didn’t have as much of a loss,” said Kim Scheeler, chief executive of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce

Kerry Riley
Kerry@kerryriley.com
One South Realty Group, Richmond VA
Richmond Real Estate