U.S. By The Numbers

Among the 315 metropolitan areas that statistically define the U.S., technology-intensive San Jose, for the second consecutive year, ranks No. 1 on IndustryWeek's index of manufacturing performance. The rankings, based on 1998 U.S. government data, the most recent nationwide data available, place Portland, Oreg., in the No. 2 spot. This year, for the first time, a unique 1.16 MB Excel spreadsheet that lists rankings and manufacturing data for the U.S. is downloadable from www.IndustryWeek.com/IWinprint/communities. Developed by IndustryWeek in partnership with the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University -- and complementing the articles on these pages -- the spreadsheet contains data arranged by all 315 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) as well as by the country's component economic areas (CEAs) and exurban areas. Rankings are derived from an equally weighted index consisting of five elements: manufacturing employment, productivity, share of U.S. manufacturing output, three-year dollar change in metropolitan-area manufacturing output, and three-year average annual change in manufacturing employment.