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Winston-Salem is No. 7 in best places to start over
Business Week ranks city high for new career or life
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Published: June 24, 2009
In the past week, Winston-Salem has learned it is both a great place to find a new job and not big enough to measure for its economic-recovery potential.
Those seemingly contradictory findings came from national rankings by BusinessWeek and the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
BusinessWeek ranked the Winston-Salem metropolitan statistical area at No. 7 among the nation's "top 20 best places to start over." The MSA consists of Davie, Forsyth, Stokes and Yadkin counties.
"If you've been laid off or are just looking for a new place to start your career -- or life -- over, here are 20 places in the U.S. where companies are hiring and the quality of life is high," according to the magazine's report.
The ranking was based largely on a Manpower Inc. hiring survey released June 9, which found that 22 percent of Winston-Salem area employers planned to add staff in the third quarter. Richmond was ranked sixth on the list with the same percentage of employers projected to hire in the quarter.
According to the national Manpower survey, the Winston-Salem area has the third strongest outlook among U.S. metros with its 15 percentage-point difference between hiring and job-cut projections.
Yet, because the Winston-Salem MSA is the 104th largest in the country, it was just outside of the Brookings Institution's study of the recovery prospects for the nation's top 100 metros.
Rankings for Raleigh (32nd), Charlotte (59th) and Greensboro-High Point (73rd) were included.
The research group also did not include the Winston-Salem area in another study this year when it measured job sprawl, or how far people are willing to commute to work in an urban area.
The two reports demonstrate the subjective, fickle and sometimes fleeting nature of economic rankings.
For example, Winston-Salem was ranked as a top 10 spot for retirees in separate surveys in 2007. But the rankings have yet to lead to a major migration of retirees to the area.
"It's difficult to judge how much influence any one study might have," said Gayle Anderson, the chief executive and president of the Greater Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce.
"However, since this was reported in BusinessWeek, such a widely read business publication, the exposure is a positive for us."
The magazine's snapshot also included other key economic categories, such as population size, average home price for January and unemployment rate.
But what was most important to Anderson and Bob Leak Jr., the president of Winston-Salem Business Inc., is that BusinessWeek said that the area has become "a hub for high-tech business, including biomedical life sciences, design, nanotechnology and advanced manufacturing."
"We've been working for decades to promote Winston-Salem as a good environment for high-tech businesses, and this helps us immensely," Anderson said.
Leak said he's not sure how much stock site-selection consultants place on economic rankings.
But the BusinessWeek ranking "reinforces our message as a good place for certain business segments," Leak said. "I do believe that company leaders who see the results of these rankings might direct their consultant to explore a location that might not have originally been on their target list."
Recently, several elected and economic-development officials sent letters to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget requesting that 10 Triad counties be reunited after they were split into three metropolitan and two micropolitan statistical areas in 2004.
Economic officials said that having the Triad split up provides more clarity as to which area is faring better economically. In many instances, it has been the Winston-Salem MSA.
But the officials stress that the splitting of the Triad has done financial harm, as well as hurt the reputation of the region.
■ Richard Craver can be reached at 727-7376 or at <span>rcraver@wsjournal.com.
The top 10
The Winston-Salem area is ranked among the top 10 metros for starting a new career or job.
• No. 1: Anchorage, Ala.
• No. 2: Provo-Orem, Utah
• No. 3: Kennewick-Richland-Pasco, Wash.
• No. 4: Yakima, Wash.
• No. 5: Omaha, Neb.,-Council Bluffs, Iowa
• No. 6: Richmond
• No. 7: Winston-Salem
• No. 8: Colorado Springs, Colo.
• No. 9: Amarillo, Texas
• No. 10: Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, Va.
Source: BusinessWeek
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