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Article published Feb 11, 2004
Report puts Upstate on lower rung of places to start business in U.S.
Chris Winston
Business Editor
The Upstate has been named one of the nation's worst places to start a business by Inc. magazine.Inc., which released its first ranking of the Top 25 Cities to Do Business in America on Tuesday, also released a list of the worst places.The Greenville-Spartanburg metropolitan area ranked as the third-worst area in the country.The list, available Feb. 24 in the March issue of the magazine, is based on job growth data in 277 cities and metropolitan areas.Sustained job growth, balanced among many industries, was the leading indicator used.The Upstate was hurt in the ranking by its quickly vanishing slate of manufacturing jobs and poor job growth numbers in other industries.In the five-year period ending December 2003, the Upstate lost approximately 28,600 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And manufacturing job-losses accounted for 22,700 of that.John Poole, president and chief executive officer of the Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce, said the Upstate has been in a transition period for a number of years, as manufacturing and textile jobs have been lost by the thousands.He said other jobs have been created to fill the void, but it just hasn't been enough."We've replaced a number of jobs, but we also lost a lot," Poole said.San Jose, Calif., still reeling from its tech-implosion, and Grand Rapids, Mich., another area hit hard by manufacturing losses, were the two worst places to start a business, according to the list.On the other list, Atlanta was named the top city for entrepreneurial growth.Florida, with young retirees re-entering the work force and highly educated workers, put six cities into the Top 25 list."A region's overall affordability was the theme that united the cities atop this year's list," said Joel Kotkin, the author of the article and a senior fellow at Pepperdine University's Davenport Institute for Public Policy."For that reason, cities with sprawling suburbs fared very well, often at the expense of more high-priced urban areas. This was reflected in the impressive showing by areas in the Midwest and Southeastern United States."Regions that were "hot spots" during the 1990s have cooled, according to Inc. Executive Editor Ed Sussman.The new "hot spots" are not the names that many would expect."The areas on this list may not have the sex appeal, but if you're an entrepreneur looking to grow a business, they generally have everything you could want: low housing and commercial real estate costs, business-friendly city governments and an affordable cost-of-living," Sussman said.To determine the ranking, Inc. measured current-year employment growth, as well as current trends in the annual average growth over the past three years, and compared employment expansion in the first half vs. the second half of the last decade.Chris Winston can be reached at 562-7267 or chris.winston@shj.com.