West Des Moines-Des Moines Improves in Annual Best-Performing Cities Ranking

West Des Moines and the Des Moines metro area made the Milken Institute’s annual list of the Best-Performing Cities for 2012, coming in at No. 72 on the large cities list.

That’s an improvement In 2011, the Des Moines/West Des Moines metro area was ranked 83rd.

The return of technology clusters to the list of Best-Performing Cities is the top story for 2012, according to a press release.

The Milken Institute said the resurgence of business investment in equipment, especially information technology and software, has been the unheralded story of this recovery as businesses began making IT purchases that had been deferred.

“Throw in some social media, iPads, the apps that run them and clean technology, and it becomes clear why these tech centers advanced in 2012,” according to the release. “A recovery in traditional manufacturing was also important, particularly autos and heavy capital goods like mining equipment and excavators.”

In the most recent rankings, the Des Moines/West Des Moines:

• Ranked 35th in five-year-job growth from 2006-2011,
• Ranked 122nd in one-year-job growth from 2010-2011
• Ranked 40th in the growth of wages and salaries from 2005 to 2010.

The Best-Performing Cities index includes measures of job, wage, and technology performance to rank the nation's 200 large metropolitan areas and 179 smaller metros, according to a press release.

Unlike other "best places" rankings, it does not use quality-of-life metrics, such as commute times or housing costs. In the Institute's index, employment growth is weighted most heavily due to its critical importance to community vitality. Wage and salary growth measures the quality of jobs created and sustained.