Janesville and Madison MSAs among Best Cities for Information Jobs
Excerpted from newgeography.com
By Joel Kotkin and Michael Shires
Both the Madison MSA and the Janesville MSA are among New Geography’s 2015 ranking of Cities Winning the Battle for Information Jobs. Janesville tops the list for Small Cities, while Madison ranks #6 for Medium Cities.
Overall, employment in information industries has shrunken 4.2% since 2009 to 2.7 million jobs, while total nonfarm employment in the U.S. grew by 5.1%. Yet looking at the information sector give us an important picture of how these changes have shifted jobs to certain regions and away from others. Our rankings are based on employment growth in the sector over the short-, medium- and long-term, going back to 2003, and factor in momentum — whether growth is slowing or accelerating.
If we are looking for future information hubs, one place to look would be our small and mid-sized metro area lists. Here the top ranks are dominated by college towns, including Baton Rouge, La., home to Louisiana State University, where information employment has surged 28.6% since 2009. It places third on our mid-size cities list, which also features such high-flying college towns as fourth place Provo-Orem, Utah (Brigham Young), No. 5 Durham-Chapel Hill (Duke, University of North Carolina), No. 6 Madison (University of Wisconsin), and No. 7 Ann Arbor (University of Michigan).
