Montgomery development news

[Brown Duckz]

Montgomery moves up in business ranks
By Cosby Woodruff • September 18, 2008


Montgomery rocketed from 78th place to No. 38 in a Milken Institute ranking of cities that have experienced business success.

The Milken Institute, an economic research group, ranked cities based on factors that include job growth, wage growth and technology growth over one-to-five-year periods.

The group said its Best Performing Cities Index is a measure of job growth and does not measure cost of living or other factors, only increases in the number of jobs and salary increases.

Keivan Deravi, an economist at Auburn Montgomery, said he believes the ranking stems from Montgomery's successful recruitment of Hyundai, along with the area's base of government jobs and its growing technology sector.

He said the two are largely interrelated. Much of Montgomery's technology sector is based with the U.S. Air Force, he said.

"We have a pretty good government anchor," he said. "And we have a pretty good high-tech base out at Maxwell. They have some pretty serious high-tech programs going on."

Hyundai, he said, also increased technology jobs in the area.

"They have so much automation, it had to," he said.

Deravi said Hyundai made all the difference in job and wage growth.

"With Hyundai, we had to raise wages to the regional level," he said. "A lot of structural changes happened with that."

He predicted wages in the area will level off as the area job market adjusts to Hyundai.

"That wage growth is beginning to slow now," he said.

Wages should not fall, but Deravi said the sudden increase that came from thousands of new manufacturing jobs is hard to maintain.

Provo, Utah, ranked No. 1 in the survey.

Huntsville was fifth overall.