Inc. Magazine just ranked the Raleigh-Cary area as the 7th largest business boomtown among US large cities. Last year, they ranked the Raleigh area as 13th in business boomtowns.

I have noticed recently that Raleigh downtime is really blowing up, just based on the number of cranes I see when driving through. Research Triangle Park is still booming and we see lots of startups and VC firms feeding them.

Wilmington is the highest ranking North Carolina city to appear on the “small cities” list. At the top of the list this year is St. George, Utah, which had an 8.4 percent year-over-year job growth rate and a whopping 41.8 percent five-year growth rate.