Olympia Ranks 7th On Milken Top 200 Cities List. Seattle Does Okay at 17th

Olympia scored 7th in the Milken Institute’s 200 Best Performing Cities list of 2009, up from 9th the year before, while Seattle remained unchanged at 17th place. Spokane dropped to 41st from 35th place in 2008, while Tacoma fell to 21st from 8th in 2008.

Olympia placed high on the list because of strong job and salary growth (a resurgent government sector?) Seattle scored low on overall job and wage growth but high on tech jobs.

The Milken Institute looked at job growth, wage increases and high tech growth during various periods over the past 7 years.

What surprised me most was the poor performance of California’s Bay Area, the heart of U.S. technology. San Francisco ranked 85th, down from 74th the year before. Seattle outscored San Francisco on High-Tech GDP growth although it was outranked by San Jose (Silicon Valley) on that score. But Silicon Valley fell far below Seattle on the overall score, with a rank of 50. It performed particularly poorly on job growth. Those numbers may reflect California’s overall malaise or it may merely reflect the fact that California was hit by recession slightly earlier than Washingon.

Should we care about such rankings? Like all such rankings, they are lagging indicators. They represent a snapshot of the past. Yet they are also an important indicator of longer term trends. Seattle should be happy at the strength of its high tech sector, but concerned about stalling job growth and wages.