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Low wages
Looking to keep your staffing costs down? Start with these metro areas, where the hourly wages are the lowest.
Rank Metro area Average hourly wage
1 McAllen, TX $13.85
2 Brownsville, TX $14.08
3 Myrtle Beach, SC $14.54
4 Valdosta, GA $14.65
5 Laredo, TX $14.74
6 Jacksonville, NC $14.86
7 Morristown, TN $14.96
8 Joplin, MO $15.02
9 Jonesboro, AR $15.05
10 Florence, AL $15.15
11 Sumter, SC $15.17
12 Yuma, AZ $15.18
13 Lawton, OK $15.3
14 Hot Springs, AR $15.39
15 Hattiesburg, MS $15.5
16 Monroe, LA $15.5
17 San Angelo, TX $15.5
18 Danville, VA $15.51
19 Goldsboro, NC $15.51
20 Pine Bluff, AR $15.54
21 Abilene, TX $15.55
22 Gadsden, AL $15.55
23 Wheeling, WV $15.61
24 Fort Smith, AR $15.66
25 Logan, UT $15.68
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2008 Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates.
Best Places Winners
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Find your launch spot
Do you prefer a place that is: Small Medium Large
The factors that matter most to me are:
 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

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