WESTFIELD – A recent study published by the consumer advocacy website nerdwallet has confirmed what many have long suspected: Westfield is a city on the rise.
In fact, the Whip City is the top “city on the rise” in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, according to the study.
The nerdwallet study exhaustively analyzed and rated 61 cities in the state, ranking them based on the growth of their working-age population, employment, and median income between 2009 and 2012.
Westfield topped the list with an overall growth score of 73.4, edging out the Middlesex County cities of Everett and Newton in the top three, who scored 67.7 and 66.2, respectively.
The remaining municipalities in the top 10 were Methuen, Lawrence, Melrose, Revere, Winchester, Belmont, and Milford. Of the state’s top 10 cities on the rise, Westfield was the only city in the top 10 from western Mass.
According to the study, Westfield saw a 1.3 percent growth in it’s working-age population, a 8.9 percent growth in employment, and a whopping 23.3 percent growth in the city’s median income from 2009 to 2012.
While the city’s working-age population growth hasn’t risen quite to the extent of those in the Boston metro, it’s high growth in overall employment and in median income contributed in large part to it’s top score on the nerdwallet metric.
“Based on our data, Westfield has the highest income increase in the state of Massachusetts,” said Maggie Clark, a nerdwallet analyst. “That’s not to say that people are making the most money, it’s that their income has increased a lot over the last three years. It’s a growing city.”
Clark said that the study was compiled through recently accumulated census data, and that the rest of Hampden County didn’t fare quite as well as Westfield.
“Springfield is toward the bottom of the list and that is because the population shrunk and the percentage of people employed dropped also,” she said. “Chicopee had a strong income increase, while jobs and population are down there, too. Holyoke too saw a drop in population, and just a small increase in jobs.”
Springfield placed 46th out of the 61 cities in the state, seeing negative growth in both it’s working-age population and employment percentages (-0.6 and -3.9 respectively) with a 5.7 percent increase in median income. Chicopee and Holyoke placed 24th and 21st, with both seeing negative working-age population growth (-0.6 and -2.5) and Chicopee facing a 3.0 decrease in it’s employment growth.
Holyoke, often regarded as one of the poorest municipalities in the state, actually saw a 1.6 percent increase in employment numbers, and a 9.4 percent increase in median income, still shy of Chicopee’s 12.4 percent median income increase.
Clark also stated that, in several locations throughout the state, median income increased by over 20 percent, a “pretty significant” jump.
“Theres a strong split in the top 10. There were the wealthy Boston suburbs, Westfield in western Mass., and some pretty rough, up-and-coming, mostly Boston and Merrimack valley-area cities,” she said when asked about how a city like Lawrence, notorious for poverty and crime, found itself in the top 10 of the 61 cities in the state. “What we saw there was the population increase in those places were really strong, upwards of two percent.”
She added that a city with a lot of population growth but a lack of income growth can still come out strong, and that many of the state’s older industrial cities are finding their ways onto the list.
“You’re going to get cities where there are revitalization efforts going on, and these are pretty significant. There’s an effort right now through the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and some philanthropic groups to help those cities,” she said. “The immigrant populations are pretty large in some of these cities. In Everett, 43.6 percent were born outside the U.S., so that’s a lot.”
Clark said that nerdwallet is at the beginning of a nationwide, state-by-state survey of U.S. cities, and have recently concluded with studies for the states of Georgia, Washington, and California among others.
“In general, it’s an indication that Westfield’s economy has improved over the last few years, and we have a lot of private industry to thank for that,” said Westfield Community Development Director Peter Miller. “Westfield is a healthy community and that is a good thing.”
“Just because the median income has gone up doesn’t mean that everyone’s has,” he said. “We have still have a population that requires attention, and we continue to work to make sure the city moves forward while continuing to pay attention to our downtown census tracks as well.”
“There is no way to spin this badly. This is a great thing, to be seen as a community on the rise,” he said. “Among the mid-sized to larger cities in western Massachusetts, we’re the only one that has seen growth in each of the last five censuses. Most of them have seen at least one of the census periods where a population has dropped.”
“That hasn’t happened in Westfield. We’ve continued to grow and hope to continue that trend going forward,” Miller said. “A lot of that is going to depend on employment opportunities being offered for people who are just now coming of age in the work environment.”
City Advancement Officer Joe Mitchell, upon reading the NerdWallet report, stated that he wasn’t surprised by the lofty ranking.
“For the amount of effort that’s being put into improving the city of Westfield, it doesn’t surprise me that we’re at the top of the list,” he said. “Since 2010, the city has seen approximately $114 million in private investment, and right now, I have about $74 million more of private investment thats in the pipeline.”
“Will we get all of it across the finish line? Maybe yes, maybe no, but there is that interest in the city on the large scale,” Mitchell added. “All of the different groups that’re committed to the city of Westfield, and it’s all paying off.”
