Washington scores well as city for small-business employees

Published May 6, 2015 by Robert Powell, III

The Washington, D.C., area ranked 19th best among  100 metro areas in a report looking for the best places to work for a small business.

The personal finance website WalletHub also ranked Richmond No. 31 and Hampton Roads 82nd on its list of 2015’s Best & Worst Cities to Work for a Small Business.

WalletHub said it looked at the 100 most populated U.S. metro areas to “assess their friendliness toward employees and job seekers.”

Eleven metrics were used, including net small-business job growth, industry variety and employee earnings.

The Washington area, including Northern Virginia, ranked 35th in small-business environment and 14th in economic environment.

The Richmond area ranked 50th in small-business environment and 13th in economic environment.

Hampton Roads, which includes Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Newport News, ranked 93rd and 27th, respectively, in the same category.

No other Virginia metro area was listed.

The top 10 metro areas on the list were:

1.       Charlotte, N.C.
2.       Raleigh, N.C.
3.       Oklahoma City
4.       Austin, Texas
5.       Omaha, Neb.
6.       Nashville, Tenn.
7.       Salt Lake City
8.       Dallas
9.       Houston
10.     Boston

The bottom 10 were:

91.  Springfield, Mass.
92.  Tucson, Ariz.
93.  Augusta, Ga.
94.  New Haven, Conn.
95.  Bakersfield, Calif.
96.  Fresno, Calif.
97.  Scranton, Pa.
98.  Toledo, Ohio
99.  Stockton, Calif.
100. Youngstown, Ohio