It’s a chilly Wednesday, November 18, 2009 in Bellingham, WA. We had slush on our porch last night caused by a very quick shower of rain and snow mixed.

According to the report, Bellingham performed well compared to other metro areas in terms of five-year job growth and five-year wage growth, ranking in the top 20 in those categories.   However, this area didn’t do well in one-year job growth, showing a 2.6 percent decline between March 2008 and March 2009, ranking 70^th out of the 124 metro areas.

Looking at the overall report, Texas metro areas dominated the top of both the small and large city lists. Midland and Longview grabbed the top two spots on the small cities’ list while Austin was at the top of the large cities’ category. Authors of the report noted that areas with a heavy reliance on the oil and gas industry did well in both job retention and growth.

Among other local communities, Kennewick ranked sixth overall among small metro cities while Olympia metro area ranked seventh out of 200 large metro areas. Seattle ranked 17^th best in the large cities with Tacoma coming in 21^st.

It will be interesting to see if Bellingham and other Washington communities do as well in the 2010 report. While Bellingham has its recession issues, this year’s report indicates that we weren’t hit as hard early on in the recession as other parts of the country, particularly Detroit and other areas in Michigan which show the least amount of economic vibrancy. Will we maintain our job market and dodge the recession woes of other areas or will we get hit harder as the recession continues? Next year’s report will give us insight.*

 *Information gathered/quoted from The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham ranks high on list for best performers