CNNMoney.com > Small Business > Best Places to Launch

All metro areas
Rank Metro area Population # of small businesses
(1-49 employees)
#15 among small places Abilene, TX 159,521 3,752
  Akron, OH 698,553 16,557
  Albany, NY 853,919 20,140
  Albany, GA 164,919 3,329
  Albuquerque, NM 845,913 18,760
  Alexandria, LA 153,105 3,338
  Allentown, PA 808,210 18,070
  Altoona, PA 125,174 3,119
  Amarillo, TX 243,838 5,759
#18 among small places Ames, IA 86,754 1,911
  Anchorage, AK 364,701 10,017
  Anderson, SC 182,825 3,786
  Anderson, IN 131,501 2,456
  Ann Arbor, MI 347,376 7,760
  Anniston, AL 113,419 2,421
  Appleton, WI 219,720 5,581
  Asheville, NC 408,436 11,695
  Athens, GA 189,264 4,390
  Atlanta, GA 5,376,285 129,796
  Atlantic City, NJ 270,681 6,680
#16 among small places Auburn, AL 133,010 2,321
  Augusta, GA 534,218 10,399
#8 among large places Austin, TX 1,652,602 37,296
*Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2007 County Business Patterns.
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 Affordable wages  Few foreclosures
 Educated workers  Low housing costs
 Low crime  High local incomes
 A growing economy  Population growth
 Growing small business population

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How we picked the Best Places
This year we partnered with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to find the 50 most business-friendly communities in America.

With help from Robert Fairlie, an economist and leading scholar of entrepreneurship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, we developed a methodology and sifted through such data on factors such as per capita income, hourly wages, workforce quality, crime rates, taxes and foreclosures. More

Comments? E-mail the editors
Data partners

This package was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Foreclosure data provided by RealtyTrac.

Housing price-to-income data provided by Moody's Economy.com.