Twin Cities outperforms peer regions on some key benchmarks; lags in others

The Twin Cities is doing better than several other major metro areas on key measures, such as crime and housing affordability. But it is lagging in business formation and racial inclusiveness. Those are some of the highlights of Greater MSP's annual regional indicators report.

Most, if not all, of the economic and other regional measures in the report are not news. But the economic development organization uses the statistics to rank the Twin Cities against 11 other regions. They are Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Denver; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Denver; Pittsburgh; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and Seattle.

Compared with those selected cities, the Twin Cities is No. 1 or 2 on benchmarks such as the unemployment rate, the percentage of adults and women working, jobs paying a wage that can sustain a family, housing affordability, volunteerism, people living within a 10-minute walk to a park and air quality. The economic development organization said the Twin Cities ranks third in college graduates, with 52 percent of adults 25 or older having an associate degree or higher.

But the region is at the bottom of the pack when it comes to the employment gap between whites and people of color, the poverty rate of people of color, the formation of new businesses and venture capital. In addition, the region's corporate taxes were the second-highest.