Utah's two major metro areas have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to join the top 20 best places in America to do business.
In its latest rankings to be published in the May 29 issues of Forbes, Provo/Orem is ranked 18th among the top 100 and Salt Lake City/Ogden is listed 20th in the magazine's second annual "best places to do business in America" rankings.That's up from 72nd for Provo/Orem in 1999 and 38th for Salt Lake City/Ogden. Last year was the first year that Forbes, known for its annual "400 richest Americans" list, began ranking the cities for their desirability as a site for business.
According to Forbes, the magazine's second annual business site rankings may be used in a variety of ways, including finding a better job or starting a new business because you have a hot technology or an Internet idea that no one else has yet exploited.
Forbes says most people would automatically think of the traditional high-tech cluster sites such as "Silicon Valley" in the northern California Bay Area or "Silicon Alley," a moniker not many people have heard before, which refers to the emergence of New York City as an Internet tech center for companies like iVillage and Double Click.
Well, think again, say Tim W. Ferguson and William Heuslien, who compiled the rankings with the help of the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, Calif. They note that the majority of the best places in America to do business or advance your career are nowhere near the usual tech centers.
But they're close to the not-so-well-known ones, points out Ferguson.
"Not surprisingly, the best places to do business are technology hubs where entrepreneurs can feed off top knowledge institutions and where business costs are low."
According to Forbes latest business "beauty contest," the best place to do business in the U.S. is Austin, Texas; followed by Atlanta, Ga.; Santa Rosa, Calif.; Boulder/Longmont, Colo.; Boise; San Diego, Orange County, Calif.; San Antonio; West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Colorado Springs, Colo., to round out the top 10.
The next tier of the top 20 puts Fort Collins/Loveland, Colo. in 11th place, followed by Seattle, Wash; Oakland, Calif.; Charlotte, N.C.; Fort Worth/Arlington, Texas; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Portland/Vancouver, Ore. and Wash.; Provo/Orem; Sacramento; and Salt Lake City/Ogden.
So why did the Wasatch Front take such a big leap upward from last year to this? It's not because one of Forbes' editors came skiing here last winter and liked the place, assured spokesman Jason Thompson.
"All of the data is empirical and the source is the federal government so it's not arbitrary and the numbers say that you guys moved up," said Thompson.
The overall study looked at data for 200 of the nation's largest metro areas and 94 smaller ones. The data mentioned by Thompson that was used to compile the rankings includes job growth, earned income, and output by companies in "several critical technology sectors" among others.
Austin, the first-place city, for example, ranked first in wage and salary growth, fifth in job growth, and 14th in its concentration of high-tech company output.
If you want to check out the entire list on the Internet, go to www.forbes.com/tool/toolbox/bestplaces.
Here are some rankings of other western cities that compete with Salt Lake/Ogden and Provo/Orem as sites for business.
Phoenix/Mesa, Ariz., ranked 23rd; Las Vegas, 30th; San Francisco, 42nd; Reno, 70th; Denver, 71st; Fresno, Calif., 89th; Bakersfield and Modesto, Calif., 99th and 100th.
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