NOTES: The metropolitan area growth index, or performance score, combines change in employment and GDP per capita into a single index. For a given time period, the growth rates for each indicator are standardized and then added together to create a final score. The final score is ranked, with 1 indicating the strongest combined performance during the given time period. See the appendix to this report for greater detail.

SOURCES: Brookings analysis of data from Oxford Economics, Moody’s Analytics, and the U.S. Census Bureau.