Sioux Falls is #1 for 7th straight year for best small city for business & careers

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Top 10 Best Cities For Business and Career

1. Sioux Falls, SD
Metro Area Population: 238,000
Cost of Doing Business Rank Rank1: 5
Economic Growth Projected Rank2: 68
Educational Attainment Rank3: 31
Income Growth Rank*: 11
Job Growth Projected Rank2: 22
Net Migration Rank*: 15

Leading the way for a seventh straight year is Sioux Falls, S.D. Credit business costs that are 26% below the national average, low crime rates and an economy that is expected to expand 4.1% annually over the next five years. Another enticement: South Dakota does not levy individual or corporate income taxes.

Sioux Falls is the only city that scores in the top 25 in at least eight of the 12 categories that we considered as part of the ranking. The Sioux Falls metro area was the fastest growing metro in the Midwest over the past 10 years with 30% growth and its population now stands at 238,100. In fact it seems the only thing that will knock Sioux Falls off its perch is if it graduates to our list of the Best Places for Business and Careers that looks at the 200 largest metro areas (minimum population of 245,000). The gross metro product for the Sioux Falls metro is $10.9 billion which is the largest of any of the small metros we examined.

Unemployment in Sioux Falls has doubled over the past three years, but at 4.3% it is still one of the lowest in the country. Mike Cooper, Sioux City's Director of Planning and Building Services, says that in recent years when employment was hovering just over 2% some employers had trouble filling jobs because unemployment was so low.

Two companies that have been able to find employees and have taken advantage of Sioux Falls' favorable business climate are Citigroup and Wells Fargo. They are among the area's largest employers and have helped fuel Sioux Falls' growth over the past decade. The two largest employers in the area are health care providers Sanford Health and Avera. "Once people come here and see what's available, they are usually very impressed with what we have to offer as a community," says Cooper.

I'm very attuned to the fact that, as this states, unemployment has doubled here in the past three years. Every day I'm dealing with the real life ramifications of that in people's lives. And listening to some of our community's business leaders and bankers, the problems are just starting. The problems in the US economy are not cyclical, they are structural and the Obama administration gets the credit for making a bad situation far far worse.