Iowa City metro area ranked as third strongest Iowa economy

The Iowa City metropolitan statistical area is ranked No. 38 among 381 MSAs nationwide in economic strength by an independent economic research firm.

The Iowa City MSA, which includes Johnson and Washington counties, has the third strongest metro economy in Iowa, behind Des Moines and the Council Bluffs-Omaha area, according to Palm City, Fla.-based POLICOM Corp.

Other Iowa metro areas and their national rankings were Des Moines, 4; Council Bluffs-Omaha, 5; Cedar Rapids, 53; Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, 111; Dubuque, 158; Ames, 177; Waterloo-Cedar Falls, 206; and Sioux City, 214.

The Iowa City MSA, which has reached its highest ranking to date since 2005, has experienced double-digit growth each year since 2012, POLICOM said.

'The main story within this year's ranking, and our trajectory for the past three years, is consistency of growth,” said Ed Raber, director of the Washington Economic Development Group, in a news release.

POLICOM, which specializes in analyzing local and state economies, ranks the condition of an economy from the viewpoint of its impact on the 'standard of living” of the people who live and work in an area. The highest ranked areas have had rapid, consistent growth in size and quality for an extended period of time.

The formulas used to determine economic strength measure how the economy has behaved, not what has caused it to perform. POLICOM uses 24 factors to measure growth in size and quality of an economy, behavior of an economy, and negative sectors within an economy.