The Milken Institute released their Best-Performing Cities Biggest Gainers: Sectors on the Upswing report and the Rockford MSA ranks 5th! The “biggest gainers” among the Top 25 metros that improved their rankings the most surround — construction, real estate, transportation equipment manufacturing and healthcare. These are the industries driving the economies making the biggest gains.
The complete chart can bee seen at the bottom of the page.
The one-year growth of Detroit-Warren-Dearborn is 3.5 percent greater than the average of the sector’s biggest gainers. Though Detroit-Warren-Dearborn by far added the most jobs in this sector both in the last year and in the past five years, Toledo, OH, and Rockford, IL, also stand out. Over the five-year period, transportation equipment manufacturing employment in these two metros grew 96 percent and 84 percent, respectively, adding a combined 11,490 jobs.
Construction has gone from bust to boom in the last five years, and the sector had the greatest employment gains in the Midwest and East Coast. This particular sector also yielded employment opportunities in real estate. These two sectors both saw employment growth in the vast majority metros on the biggest gainers list.
Beyond saving lives, health-care services also added economic life to the biggest gainers. Health care has been a growing sector for a long time, but ambulatory health-care services, hospitals and nursing and residential care facilities have been averaging 7 percent employment growth over the last five years. Collectively, the biggest gainers in this year’s index have seen 183,030 jobs added across these three sectors. These sectors offer stable, higher paying jobs than many other service-sector positions. Hospitals, in particular, offer higher-wage jobs and also bring talent and research into an area.
Read the full article on MilkenInstitute.org.
