Yesterday, the Milken Institute released its 2025 Best-Performing Cities Index. The index evaluates the performance of 403 metro areas across the country as the post-pandemic economy reaches a new status quo and includes factors such as job growth, wages, high-tech growth, housing affordability, and broadband access. In this shifting economic and societal landscape, the BPC rankings help provide an objective framework to evaluate the performance of U.S. cities.
The top three large cities for this year’s index were Raleigh, North Carolina; Ogden–Clearfield, Utah; and Salt Lake City, Utah; while the top three small cities were Gainesville, Georgia; St. George, Utah; and Idaho Falls, Idaho. Notably, most (13 out of 18) of the top-ranked large and small cities are in landlocked states. Among the key findings in the Index, the relatively slow growth of small metros’ high-tech GDP (compared to large metros), coupled with already lower high-tech concentration, implies a growing divide in high-tech presence between small and large metropolitan areas.
The 2025 full Index rankings are available here.
