Youngstown ranks lowest in state for business, job growth

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Youngstown was the lowest-rated city in Ohio in a study of the best cities for business and careers by Forbes.

The city rated 185 out of 200 municipalities and ranked three spots behind Toledo, the next-lowest city in the state, on the Forbes list.

Forbes rated Youngstown 20th out of the 200 in cost to do business, 172 in job growth and 183 in education.

The study rated job growth in the area at 1.3 percent and projects future job growth at 0.9 percent.

According to Forbes, its study considers 12 metrics relating to job growth (past and projected), costs (business and living), income growth over the past five years, educational attainment and projected economic growth through 2014. It also considers quality-of-life issues such as crime rates, cultural and recreational opportunities and net migration patterns. The survey also includes the number of highly ranked colleges in an area per the magazine’s annual college rankings. The most weight is given to business costs and educational attainment in the overall ranking.

Other Ohio and nearby cities included in the Forbes list released Wednesday, and their rankings are: Columbus, 24; Pittsburgh, 35; Cincinnati, 104; Akron, 129;Cleveland, 141; Canton, 148; Erie, Pa., 160; and Dayton, 180.

Youngstown has appeared on a lot of these type of lists in both a positive and negative fashion.

The area was on a Brookings list in May that showed both. The Youngstown-Warren-Boardman metro area rated 95 out of 100 metro areas after losing 46.2 percent of manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010, but the same information ranked the area third nationally in manufacturing-job growth between the first quarter of 2010 and the fourth quarter of 2011 at an 11.7 percent increase.