by Valorie H. Rice
Senior Specialist, Business Information
Current Data Releases as of 08 February 2019
Tucson made tremendous gains in the 2018 Best-Performing Cities rankings from Milken Institute. Making the third largest jump in standings for the large cities list, Tucson moved from 154th in 2017 to 102nd out of 200 large cities in 2018. Phoenix also had a boost, moving up 20 spots to rank at 20th. Provo-Orem, Utah ranked first for a second year in a row, followed by San Jose, CA; Austin, TX; San Francisco, CA; and Dallas, TX to round out the top five. The Best-Performing Cities rankings have lists for both large and small cities (both with 200 places) and the remainder of Arizona metropolitan areas fall into the small city rankings. Nearly all Arizona metropolitan areas increased their standing in 2018 except for Flagstaff, which shifted down 13 places to rank 84th. Prescott had the highest ranking of any Arizona metropolitan area at 12th on the small cities list, having moved up 14 places from last year. The remaining rankings were 55th for Lake Havasu City-Kingman, 94th for Yuma, and 182nd for Sierra Vista-Douglas. Milken Institute uses measures of growth in jobs, wages, and technology output over a period of five years along with current year’s performance and the concentration of technology industries in each metropolitan area to calculate the rankings.
There was an increase of 304,000 payroll jobs for the U.S. in January according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics February 1 release. The average monthly gain in 2018 was 223,000. Leisure and hospitality, construction, and health care were the sectors with the largest growth for the month. The unemployment rate moved up to 4.0% in January. The partial federal government shutdown contributed to the uptick in unemployment rate and number of unemployed persons as most furloughed federal employees were categorized in the household survey as unemployed on temporary layoff.
The U.S. trade deficit dropped to $49.3 billion in November; $6.4 billion lower than October. Imports fell 2.9% in November to $259.2 billion. Exports decreased $1.3 billion over-the-month to $209.9 billion. The year-to-date deficit of goods and services was 10.4% higher than the same period in 2017 according to the February 6 joint release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau. December data is now scheduled to be released on March 6.
January bankruptcy filings in Arizona were 1,178, an increase of 21.9% over the same month last year. January filings had been below 1,000 from 2015 to 2018. The counties with the largest boost in bankruptcy filings over the year were from the Phoenix office, which had an increase of 26.8%. Yavapai went from 20 filings last January to 41 this January and Maricopa had 802 compared to 637 last year. Tucson office filings were up 10.7% and the Yuma office up 8.0%.
Phoenix house prices in November were among the highest in the nation for a second month in a row based on the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller indices. Las Vegas house prices increased 12.0% over the year followed by Phoenix at 8.1% and Seattle at 6.3%. U.S. national prices gained 5.2% over the last 12 months and the 20-city composite gained 4.7% according to the January 29 release.
