12 Fastest-Growing Large Cities in America: 2020

Slideshow October 20, 2020 at 02:34 PM
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(Related: 12 Best Cities for Financial Advisors to Start a Career)

The U.S. Census Bureau's report that 13 of the 15 cities with the biggest population gains between 2010 and 2019 are located in the South and West prompted researchers at the personal-finance website WalletHub to take a closer look. To determine where the fastest local economic growth has occurred in the U.S., WalletHub compared 515 cities of varying population sizes based on two key dimensions — sociodemographics, and jobs and economy — and evaluated those dimensions using 17 relevant metrics including population growth, college-educated population growth and unemployment rate decrease. Researchers graded each city on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the fastest economic growth. Finally, they determined each city's weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score, and used the resulting scores to rank-order the sample. The sample comprised only the "city proper" in each case, and excluded cities in the surrounding metro area. In addition, each city was categorized as either large, with more than 300,000 people; midsize, with between 100,000 and 300,000 people; or small, with fewer than 100,000 people. Check out the gallery for the 12 large cities with the fastest economic growth during the past decade. --- Related on ThinkAdvisor: