Central Valley has some of nation’s fastest-growing cities

WASHINGTON, D.C.

October 3, 2016 7:00am

•  And some of the slowest-growing

•  Elk Grove and Tracy make it into the top 30 out of 515

Experts might not agree on the “best” or the “right” recipe for rapid economic growth, but some cities seem to have figured out the key ingredients and how to stir the pot to sustain long-term prosperity, says the personal finance website WalletHub, a unit of Evolution Finance Inc., of Washington, D.C.

Patterns emerge within those cities, helping identify the contributing factors that perpetuate a lasting cycle of growth, says WalletHub.

But the quick path toward success is not as cut and dried for every city. In order to identify the fastest growing local economies, WalletHub’s analysts compared 515 U.S. cities of varying population sizes based on 14 key indicators of rapid economic growth.

The Central Valley city of Elk Grove is ranked as the nation’s 11th fastest growing city in the study and the fastest-growing in the Central Valley.

Tracy is the Valley’s second-fastest growing city and ranked 30th in the nation by WalletHub.

Other Valley cities and where they fall in the study:

• Bakersfield, 48th

• Manteca, 74th

• Merced, 80th

• Clovis, 122nd

• Turlock, 146th

• Stockton, 148th

• Modesto, 165th

• Sacramento, 263rd

• Visalia, 277th

• Fresno, 305th

Not included were the Central Valley cities of Porterville, Hanford, Corcoran and Madera, among others. “Some cities were not included due to data limitations,” says a spokeswoman for WalletHub.

http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=31344