By Adam McCann | WalletHub
Experts might not agree on the “best” or the “right” recipe for rapid economic growth, but some cities know the key ingredients for long-term prosperity better than others. Patterns emerge within those cities, allowing us to identify what factors contribute to a lasting cycle of growth. The South and West currently seem to be attractive places to move, as the U.S. Census Bureau reports eight of the 15 cities with the largest population gains in 2018 were located in the South and six were in the West.
Some cities thrive even through hard economic times while others struggle. To determine where the fastest local economic growth has occurred in the U.S., WalletHub compared 515 cities of varying population sizes based on 17 key measures of both growth and decline over a period of seven years. Our data set ranges from population growth to unemployment rate decrease to growth in regional GDP per capita. Read on for our findings, expert insight from a panel of researchers and a full description of our methodology.
