Colorado metros set income pace for the U.S.

The past two decades have been very good to Boulder and Fort Collins, Colo.

Income levels in the two adjacent metropolitan areas in northern Colorado have grown with a strength and consistency unmatched anywhere in the nation, according to a new study by American City Business Journals (ACBJ).

G. Scott Thomas
American City Business Journals

http://www.bizjournals.com/specials/income/story1.html

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Thanks to Chris Gibbons for passing this article and his comments along:

Some folks might be interested in the American City Business Journals study of income growth by city. Colorado’s two university towns (Boulder, Ft. Collins) lead the pack, but of more interest are the towns on the bottom. Riverside / San Bernardino are two towns that Joel Kotkin uses to punch holes in Richard Florida’s creative class theory.

But San Berdoo is also the home of one of the fledgling economic gardening projects coordinated by Lee Hanson at Cal State SB. I think the community is generally perceived to have a number of social problems with a lot of the economic base in transportation / distribution. It will be interesting to see if Lee’s seminal work will spread and have a significant effect on the area as time goes by. I don’t see economic gardening as a quick fix but rather a fundamental change in a community structure that will pay off over years.

I couldn’t locate the actual study yet. If anyone comes across the primary data, it would be helpful to post it to the group.

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Annual incomes for typical residents of Boulder and Fort Collins grew by more than 180 percent between 1982 and 2002, the latest year for which official figures are available. The two metros streaked far ahead of the corresponding national pace of 159 percent.

But the study considered much more than the overall growth rate for the 20-year period. It also looked at local performances over 19 shorter spans, seeking to identify those metro areas that enjoyed consistently strong rates of income growth. (Read the methodology for this report. http://www.bizjournals.com/specials/income/method.html )

ACBJ focused on per capita income (PCI), the average amount of money earned by each resident of a specified metropolitan area during a year. It analyzed PCI fluctuations in 170 areas with 2002 populations of 250,000 or more.

The two Colorado metros set a strong pace during most of the study period, each outperforming the national rate of income growth 18 times out of 20. Boulder took first place with a score of 35.52 points, followed by Fort Collins at 32.52. Any score above zero indicates that an area did better than the national average.

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Income Growth Ratings

10 Metro Areas With Best Ratings

1. Boulder, Colo.
2. Fort Collins, Colo.
3. Bridgeport, Conn.
4. Santa Cruz, Calif.
5. Boston
6. San Luis Obispo, Calif.
7. Birmingham
8. San Diego
9. Charleston, S.C.
10. San Francisco-Oakland

10 Metro Areas With Worst Ratings

1. Flint, Mich.
2. Atlantic City, N.J.
3. Rockford, Ill.
4. Stockton, Calif.
5. Modesto, Calif.
6. Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.
7. Honolulu
8. Bakersfield, Calif.
9. Winston-Salem, N.C.
10. York, Pa.
SOURCE: American City Business Journals

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Boulder, the home of the University of Colorado, has experienced a population boom since 1980, nearly doubling the size of its workforce. Income levels have been pushed higher by a dramatic increase in high-tech employment and wages. Boulder added 17,000 jobs during the 1990s in the field of professional and business services, a category that includes software development, data-processing services and computer rental and leasing.

Rounding out the top five are Bridgeport, Conn.; Santa Cruz, Calif.; and Boston. All three of these runners-up had better 20-year growth rates than the two Colorado metros did, topping 190 percent. But they failed to match the year-to-year consistency of Boulder and Fort Collins.

ACBJ’s list reflects the acceleration of the Sunbelt’s economy since the beginning of the 1980s. Eight of the 10 metros that posted the best scores — and 16 of the 25 leaders — are in the South or the West. Among the Sunbelt metros in the top 25 are Birmingham; San Diego; Charleston, S.C.; Houston; Columbus, Ga.; Memphis; Jackson, Miss.; and Nashville.

At the bottom of the rankings is Flint, Mich., an aging industrial area that fell short of the national rate of income growth every single year during the 20-year period. Its overall rate of 121 percent was 38 percentage points below the U.S. average.

Also in the bottom five are Atlantic City, N.J.; Rockford, Ill.; and the California metros of Stockton and Modesto.

Among other findings of the study:

• Bridgeport, Conn., saw the fastest growth in PCI between 1982 and 2002, 225 percent. But Bridgeport tailed off toward the end of the period, hurting its score for consistency and pushing it down to third place in ACBJ’s rankings.

• Boulder registered the nation’s best growth rates over two shorter spans, 124 percent for the 15 years from 1987 to 2002 and 68 percent for the 1992-2002 decade.

• San Diego was the national leader in the most recent half-decade. Its PCI grew 33 percent between 1997 and 2002.

• Bridgeport easily led the nation in 2002 with a per capita income of $59,727, followed by San Francisco at $46,920 and San Jose at $45,925. (The national average was $30,906.) The area with the lowest PCI was McAllen, Texas, at $14,769.