Today, the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program released an update to its regular Metro Monitor series, which has tracked the performance of the 100 largest U.S. metro areas in four indicators—jobs, unemployment, output (gross product), and house prices—since the recession.
Here are the top 10 metro areas ranked for best performance in the extent to which they have recovered their pre-recession levels of jobs, unemployment, output (gross product), and house prices through the fourth quarter of 2013:
1. Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX
2. Houston-Sugarland-Baytown, TX
3. Dallas-Forth Worth-Arlington, TX
4. San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX
5. Oklahoma City, OK
6. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN
7. Provo-Orem, UT
8. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
9. Salt Lake City, UT
10. Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA
Visit the Metro Monitor to get metro-specific data and charts on all four indicators.
About the Metro Monitor
The Metro Monitor tracks the performance of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas on four indicators: jobs, unemployment, output (gross product), and house prices. The analysis of these indicators is focused on change during three time periods: the recession, the recovery, and the combination of the two (recession + recovery). The determination of each time period is place- and indicator-specific, with the recession for a given indicator being defined by the period from its metro-specific "peak" to its "trough" and the recovery being defined by the period from its "trough" to the the fourth quarter of 2013.
For each time period and indicator, the researchers present rankings out of the 100 largest U.S. metro areas (1 indicates the best performance, 100 the worst). In addition, they present an "overall" ranking that reflects metro area performance across the four indicators.