Some of Ohio's large metropolitan areas may be on the road to recovery, according to recent rankings put out by Forbes magazine.
Forbes' list of "America's Fastest Recovering Cities" ranks the Cincinnati-Middletown metropolitan area 55th out of the 100 largest metropolitan areas as defined by the United States Office of Management and Budget. The Cincinnati-Middletown metro area includes five Ohio counties, as well as three Indiana counties and seven Kentucky counties.
"Based on the activity and interest we('ve) seen in the development of the city, I think Middletown has a very strong future," said Mike Robinette, Middletown's economic development director. "We have Cincinnati as our southern suburb and Dayton as our northern suburb. We have a strategic position on the Interstate, a location along the Great Miami River ... there are a lot of aspects in Middletown that bode well for its future."
According to Forbes, the 100 areas were analyzed using five statistical indicators: unemployment rates, Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP), foreclosures and home prices and sales rates.
Dan Ferguson, senior development specialist with the Hamilton County Development Company, said the time for celebrating a quick recovery has not yet come.
"I don't think we're necessarily through it," Ferguson said. "We may not come out of it until the middle of next year as far (as) real estate is concerned. In Hamilton County, there's just nothing being built right now. There's a lot of vacant buildings, a lot of companies are holding off on any capital investments and the ones that want to (build) don't have access to capital because the banks are being very conservative."
Ferguson said Cincinnati may still be in a better economic situation than other parts of Ohio.
"Some portions of Ohio have generally done better than the rest of the state,"
Ferguson said. "This is a pretty diversified area. The large booms that happened in housing didn't necessarily happen here."
Other Ohio areas in the Forbes rankings were Columbus (47th), Cleveland (60th), Akron (73rd), Dayton (89th) and Toledo (92nd).
Ferguson said, however, rankings such as those released by Forbes are of limited use to policymakers.
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"A lot of us (policymakers) just deal with details," Ferguson said. "We're not looking at all of these statistics."
Some have also criticized Forbes' methods of ranking the metropolitan areas.
The title "Fastest Recovering" does not accurately reflect the nature of the data used to compile the ranking, according to Charles Thibault, economist with Wanted Technologies, a Quebec-based job-market analysis company. Thibault said Forbes should have looked at how the economic indicators changed through time.
"Words have a mathematical meaning," Thibault said. "When you say 'Fastest Recovering Cities,' it means you need to look at how bad they were doing before during and after the recession."
Of the five indicators Forbes only looked at two as they changed through time, Thibault said. According to Thibault, unemployment, foreclosure and home sales statistics were simply ranked based on the most recent data, providing a snapshot but not a moving picture.
Robinette said he thinks Forbes' research is generally shallow and holds them to little credibility.
"I don't try to claim that when they report us in a good light it's some great, positive thing, just as when they report us in a bad light, I don't view it as something overly negative," Robinette said. "Last year, we were rated in one of the most dying (cities). Twelve months later, we are rated in a region that is fastest recovering."
Wanted Technologies released its own set of rankings, based on its own data.
Wanted Technologies used "Hiring Demand Indicators" (HDI) which is Wanted's own method of measurement based on help-wanted ads placed on the Internet.
Using Wanted Technologies' method of ranking, Cincinnati dropped to 79th and Akron dropped to 99th, with Cleveland jumping to 37th and Toledo to 52nd while Columbus and Dayton stayed at or near their previous rankings.
Thibault pointed out that different methods of ranking would be variably useful to different groups.
"There is a difference between the most stable, most livable and the fastest recovering cities," Thibault said.
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