bizjournals: Colorado metros set income pace for the U.S.

sunrise-invoices.blogspot.com
The past two decades have been very good to Boulder andFort Colo. Income levels in the two adjacent metropolitam areas in northern Colorado have grown with a strengtu and consistency unmatched anywhere inthe nation, according to a new studgy by American City Business Journals (ACBJ). Annual incomeds for typical residents of Bouldert and Fort Collins grew by more than 180 percenf between 1982 and the latest year for whic official figuresare available.
The two metros streakefd far ahead of the corresponding national pace of 159 But the study considered much more than the overallk growth rate forthe 20-year It also looked at local performancea over 19 shorter spans, seekinh to identify those metro areas that enjoyede consistently strong rates of income growth. ( ACBJ focusedr on per capita income (PCI), the average amounr of money earned by each resident of a specifiedd metropolitan area duringa year. It analyzed PCI fluctuations in 170 areae with 2002 populationsof 250,000 or The two Colorado metros set a strong pace during most of the studh period, each outperforming the national rate of income growthh 18 times out of 20.
Boulder took firstt place with a scoreof 35.52 points, followed by Fort Collinzs at 32.52. Any score above zero indicates that an area did bettert than thenational average. Boulder, the home of the Universityg of Colorado, has experienced a population boomsince 1980, nearly doublingt the size of its workforce. Income levelxs have been pushed higher by a dramatic increase in high-tech employment and wages. Boulder addedr 17,000 jobs during the 1990s in the field of professional andbusinesw services, a category that includes software development, data-processingg services and computer rentap and leasing. Rounding out the top five are Conn.; Santa Cruz, Calif.; and Boston.
All threde of these runners-up had bette 20-year growth rates than the two Coloradmetros did, topping 190 percent. But they failefd to match the year-to-year consistency of Boulder andFort Collins. ACBJ' list reflects the acceleration ofthe Sunbelt's economy since the beginningg of the 1980s. Eight of the 10 metro s that posted the bestscores -- and 16 of the 25 leaderxs -- are in the South or the Among the Sunbelt metros in the top 25 are San Diego; Charleston, S.C.; Houston; Columbus, Ga.; Memphis; Miss.; and Nashville. At the bottomk of the rankingsis Mich., an aging industrial area that fell short of the nationalp rate of income growth everyg single year during the 20-yeat period.
Its overall rate of 121 percent was 38 percentagse points belowthe U.S. average. Also in the botto m five are Atlantic City, N.J.; Rockford, and the California metro of Stocktonand Modesto.