100 of the Fastest-Growing Metro Areas to Consider During the Site Selection Process

Labor scalability has become a critical factor in the site selection process. Population growth is one key indicator that can help you identify high-growth metro areas with potential scalability for a variety of operations such as call centers, distribution centers, headquarters, manufacturing plants, shared service centers, retail and sales centers, and other corporate facilities. To help identify some of these high-growth cities, Site Selection Group evaluated historic and future population growth trends to find the metro areas potentially positioned to outperform the rest of the United States. 

Historic population growth analysis identifies 50 metros to consider

Analyzing historic population growth is one approach to identifying high-growth labor markets to consider during the site selection process. There are really two ways to analyze the data. The first option is to evaluate the net new population growth and the other is to analyze the percentage growth. The net new population growth approach will benefit the large metro areas as they have a larger base population to grow from, which means that even a small percentage growth can equate to a large net new population increase. Conversely, if you calculate percentage growth rate, then smaller metro areas will emerge as it is a lot easier to grow rapidly if starting from a smaller base population. The following tables identify the top 25 metro areas based on highest increase in population between 2013 and 2018 as well as the top 25 metro areas based on the population growth rate within the same time span. 

Top 25 Fastest Growing Metro Areas

Population Increase (2013-2018)

Top 25 Fastest Growing Metro Areas

% Population Growth (2013-2018)

Population growth forecast identifies 50 of the fastest-growing metro areas

Forecasting the future is always a challenging endeavor. However, demographers attempt to utilize complex equations to forecast future demographic conditions. Many of these forecasts are based on historic trends mixed with other variables. As a result, you will often see many of the same metro areas emerge as high-growth locations. Utilizing the same methodology as above, the following tables forecast high-growth metro areas based on net new population and percentage growth between 2018 to 2023.

Top 25 Fastest Growing Metro Areas

Projected Population Increase (2018-2023)

Top 25 Fastest Growing Metro Areas Forecasted

Projected % Population Growth (2018-2023)

Conclusions

Many factors should be evaluated when a company searches for the best locations for its headquarters, shared service centers, manufacturing plants, distribution centers, call centers, retail stores or other corporate facilities. Population growth is one of those factors; however, it is important to understand why a metro area is incurring such growth before making a location decision. Other factors that often accompany high-growth markets such as low unemployment, wage inflation and excessive employee attrition should be considered during the site selection process.