For the third year in a row, Provo won the Milken Institute Best Performing Cities Index award for large cities across the nation.
The index, which started in 1999, focuses on cities’ effectiveness at leveraging their resources to promote economic growth and provide essential services needed for success.
According to the report, Provo has maintained its top ranking with the highest levels of employment and wage growth over the last five years.
The rankings are decided by a collection of data points from 2021.
Keith Morey, economic development division director of Provo, said the economy and the growing tech industry played an important role in winning the award.
“Utah County and Provo in particular has weathered through past crisis like the pandemic very, very well primarily because of the strength of our tech cluster,” Morey said.
Major tech companies like Qualtrics and Vivint both originated in Provo and have majorly impacted Provo’s economy, according to Morey.
The two tech companies helped create thousands of stable jobs across Provo over the last 24 years.
Morey said BYU also played an important role in Provo’s development because of the jobs the school created for these tech companies.
According to the report, BYU provided stable employment to 4,000 Utahns.
“The students that are coming out of BYU and that intellectual capital feeds into those tech companies and really gives them a strength and a robustness that a lot of other industry clusters don’t necessarily have,” Morey said.
In addition to a growing tech industry in Provo, the city has been home to many new businesses that have been able to thrive and bring new job opportunities to Provo.
According to Morey, these successful starter businesses have made Provo a more attractive location for entrepreneurs to come and start their businesses.
