Four New Mexico cities named to ‘best-performing cities’ list

By Mike English, Assistant Editor for Albuquerque Business First:

Four New Mexico cities were named in an annual "best-performing cities" list for the U.S. — but the news is not all positive.

The Milken Institute, which has ranked cities since 1999, said in a statement that its rankings are made by using a "a comprehensive, fact-based set of criteria to rank 200 large and 201 small metros across the United States. As an outcomes-based index, growth in employment, wages and technology output are heavily weighted; metrics such as cost-of-living and quality-of-life conditions, often highly subjective, are not included."

Albuquerque logged in at No. 180 among the 200 best performing large cities in the U.S. The Duke City scored especially high in the concentration of its economy focused around high-tech, coming in No. 26 in the country. But Albuquerque showed poorly for wage growth in recent years (No. 186) and job growth for 2013-2014 (No. 165). Click here to read the full article.