Milken Institute Rankings of the NWA Metro

[Aporkalypse]

My thoughts exactly. There should be a better balance between those two stats (job growth/cost of living).

Looking at the stats, it's 144th out of 200 in cost of living - nearly in the bottom quartile. Most of the areas with cheaper cost of living aren't high growth areas.

[masons_dad1]

Looking at the stats, it's 144th out of 200 in cost of living - nearly in the bottom quartile. Most of the areas with cheaper cost of living aren't high growth areas.

Cost of living is going up and will continue going up in NWA. I'd expect that NWA may fall off the top 200 Cost of Living chart in a few years... hmmm like most other high growth areas I guess. That's why there needs to be a balance between higher paying jobs and lower cost of living. 90% of those new high paying jobs are out of reach for most people without the specialized training or experience for those jobs. It's not like industrial jobs are growing... if anything they're shrinking. All the blue-collar jobs are becoming white-collar jobs and many people are being left behind all this growth. I know it sounds tragic and in many ways it is, but isn't it worth having NWA being #1 in job growth?

I feel sorry for all those people who read those deceptive Inc. lists and move here thinking they can easily get a good paying job and then they end up at the food bank and living in a shelter and applying for menial labor jobs at Tyson. It's happening every day whether we like it or not. Why do you think NWACC is expanding so much? To make room for all the transients who moved here and need the training to get one of the many better paying jobs at a Wal-Mart vendor.

[Aporkalypse]

Cost of living is going up and will continue going up in NWA. I'd expect that NWA may fall off the top 200 Cost of Living chart in a few years... hmmm like most other high growth areas I guess. That's why there needs to be a balance between higher paying jobs and lower cost of living. 90% of those new high paying jobs are out of reach for most people without the specialized training or experience for those jobs. It's not like industrial jobs are growing... if anything they're shrinking. All the blue-collar jobs are becoming white-collar jobs and many people are being left behind all this growth. I know it sounds tragic and in many ways it is, but isn't it worth having NWA being #1 in job growth?

I feel sorry for all those people who read those deceptive Inc. lists and move here thinking they can easily get a good paying job and then they end up at the food bank and living in a shelter and applying for menial labor jobs at Tyson. It's happening every day whether we like it or not. Why do you think NWACC is expanding so much? To make room for all the transients who moved here and need the training to get one of the many better paying jobs at a Wal-Mart vendor.

It's still in the bottom third of the top 200 metros in cost of living, I don't get what the big deal is. Granted it may not be 180th out of 200 which it might've been 20 years ago but it's still a very good deal.

[masons_dad1]

It's still in the bottom third of the top 200 metros in cost of living, I don't get what the big deal is. Granted it may not be 180th out of 200 which it might've been 20 years ago but it's still a very good deal.

I guess that depends if the lower # means the lowest cost of living or the highest cost of living. I would assume that if the "Cost of Doing Business" is 35 and it's considered one of the lowest in that category then "Cost of Living" at 144 means there's 143 small metros on the list that have a lower cost of living. I don't put much faith into those lists anyway since they're mainly geared for corporate types to read and not the working class.

[jdevers]

Another thing to remember about these lists is that they are inclusive. So, they pretty much rank a couple hundred metros, add all the individual rankings up, then determine the "200 best" based on composite score. With this info, they rerank the individual rankings...otherwise you would have metros in the top 200 with scores out of bounds (like 350th in something). So in effect, these ranks are only valid against the other cities. You could assume that really good ranks (top 20-50) are probably comparable against all other metros of equal size, but outside that small range things can go downhill fast.

For us to be 144th out of 200 in cost of living, that means not just that 143 metros have a BETTER cost of living, but that 143 out of 200 metros have a better cost of living. More than likely on the original list of 500 candidates, we were in the 300 or worse range. Then when all the rankings were re-scaled, we just wound up at 144.

I may be wrong, but this is really the only acceptable way for them to make a study like this. The only other way would be to just choose 200 metros and then rank them, that would be pretty stupid though.

I will say that being dead first in salary increase and job growth does a lot to offset any cost of living increases.

[masons_dad1]

Another thing to remember about these lists is that they are inclusive. So, they pretty much rank a couple hundred metros, add all the individual rankings up, then determine the "200 best" based on composite score. With this info, they rerank the individual rankings...otherwise you would have metros in the top 200 with scores out of bounds (like 350th in something). So in effect, these ranks are only valid against the other cities. You could assume that really good ranks (top 20-50) are probably comparable against all other metros of equal size, but outside that small range things can go downhill fast.

For us to be 144th out of 200 in cost of living, that means not just that 143 metros have a BETTER cost of living, but that 143 out of 200 metros have a better cost of living. More than likely on the original list of 500 candidates, we were in the 300 or worse range. Then when all the rankings were re-scaled, we just wound up at 144.

I may be wrong, but this is really the only acceptable way for them to make a study like this. The only other way would be to just choose 200 metros and then rank them, that would be pretty stupid though.

I will say that being dead first in salary increase and job growth does a lot to offset any cost of living increases.

I don't know anymore. I compared Fayetteville with Hattiesburg, MS (ranked 40-something on cost of living) and Fayetteville has a much lower cost of living. That may just be for the city of Fayetteville though and not the metro. Who can you trust? It may mean that the lower rank is the higher cost of living. I will agree that the cost of living in NWA is much lower than many bigger metros, but it's definitely going up. My only concern with our score for salary increase is offset by the many higher paying Wal-Mart vendors and it's not spread equally across the workforce.

I just think among all the other growing pains NWA will feel the pain of poverty and homelessness in the coming years like it's never seen before. But then why should NWA be any different from any other place in America? So my concerns may have less to do with NWA than it does for the country as a whole. Just call me a bleeding heart that still expects miracles and is let down hard when they don't happen.

[jdevers]

I don't know anymore. I compared Fayetteville with Hattiesburg, MS (ranked 40-something on cost of living) and Fayetteville has a much lower cost of living. That may just be for the city of Fayetteville though and not the metro. Who can you trust? It may mean that the lower rank is the higher cost of living. I will agree that the cost of living in NWA is much lower than many bigger metros, but it's definitely going up. My only concern with our score for salary increase is offset by the many higher paying Wal-Mart vendors and it's not spread equally across the workforce.

I just think among all the other growing pains NWA will feel the pain of poverty and homelessness in the coming years like it's never seen before. But then why should NWA be any different from any other place in America? So my concerns may have less to do with NWA than it does for the country as a whole. Just call me a bleeding heart that still expects miracles and is let down hard when they don't happen.

That would be a really weird way to order a list. Imagine a hypothetical metro that was really good in everything, but had an insanely high cost of living. They would be ranked #1 in everything, and most people would assume that means perfect. Also, that would mean they would have to invert the score to come up with the composite. I think that if they did something odd like that for just one score, they would explain it clearly up front.

I agree to a certain extent with your second paragraph, but only because poverty and homelessness are such white elephants here now. For many years this area was the very definition of poverty-stricken, but even then there wasn't any real homelessness because it was a small town and it was quite some time ago. However, I think that anytime there is wage growth it starts at the top and works it's way down. The low unemployment is actually already doing wonders for the under $10 per hour set, businesses have to compete for labor and the only way to really do that is to increase pay. How many other places in Arkansas does McDonalds offer hiring bonuses?

[masons_dad1]

That would be a really weird way to order a list. Imagine a hypothetical metro that was really good in everything, but had an insanely high cost of living. They would be ranked #1 in everything, and most people would assume that means perfect. Also, that would mean they would have to invert the score to come up with the composite. I think that if they did something odd like that for just one score, they would explain it clearly up front.

I agree to a certain extent with your second paragraph, but only because poverty and homelessness are such white elephants here now. For many years this area was the very definition of poverty-stricken, but even then there wasn't any real homelessness because it was a small town and it was quite some time ago. However, I think that anytime there is wage growth it starts at the top and works it's way down. The low unemployment is actually already doing wonders for the under $10 per hour set, businesses have to compete for labor and the only way to really do that is to increase pay. How many other places in Arkansas does McDonalds offer hiring bonuses?

On the bright side there are literally hundreds of small businesses opening up everywhere in NWA and there will be thousands of retail jobs over the next several years. Although, most of these jobs normally pay close to minimum wage I think they'll need to pay more here because of such a low unemployment rate. I still have a hard time imagining all the stores at Pinnacle Promenade will have enough employees in time for opening.

The next thing I'd like to see is "real" low-income housing instead of the "Lindsey-income" housing that exists now. Nowhere in NWA can you find an apartment complex where rent is based on a sliding scale. Lindsey has set up these "moderate-income guidelines" that are based on a fixed income. The last thing Lindsey wants to see in NWA is HUD apartments competing with them.

[strmchsr77]

This is not exactly the Milkin Institute but I was not sure where else to put this. Fayetteville was voted on the Forbes Magazine's Top 10 Best Places to Live and Work last year and Fine Living TV will air this next Sunday night at 7 PM. I believe that this channel is like 166 on Fayetteville's Cox cable.

[strmchsr77]

This is not exactly the Milkin Institute but I was not sure where else to put this. Fayetteville was voted on the Forbes Magazine's Top 10 Best Places to Live and Work last year and Fine Living TV will air this next Sunday night at 7 PM. I believe that this channel is like 166 on Fayetteville's Cox cable.

Here is the website and the list of Top 10 Cities: Top 10 List

[Mith242]

This is not exactly the Milkin Institute but I was not sure where else to put this. Fayetteville was voted on the Forbes Magazine's Top 10 Best Places to Live and Work last year and Fine Living TV will air this next Sunday night at 7 PM. I believe that this channel is like 166 on Fayetteville's Cox cable.

Here is the website and the list of Top 10 Cities: Top 10 List

[masons_dad1]

This is not exactly the Milkin Institute but I was not sure where else to put this. Fayetteville was voted on the Forbes Magazine's Top 10 Best Places to Live and Work last year and Fine Living TV will air this next Sunday night at 7 PM. I believe that this channel is like 166 on Fayetteville's Cox cable.

Here is the website and the list of Top 10 Cities: Top 10 List