The Milken Institute's Best-Performing Cities - Where America's Jobs are Created and Sustained report for 2017 documents Modesto's rapid rise in rank among the 150 largest cities in the United States. The Milken report released in January 2018 evaluates performance across Job Growth (5 year, and 1 year, and recent twelve months ending August 2017), Wage Growth (5 year and 1 year), High-Tech GDP growth (5 year and 1 year), Percentage of Economy from High-Tech in 2016, and High-Tech Location Quotient. High-Tech Location quotient compares an area's percentage of jobs in high tech versus the national percentage.
In 2016, Modesto ranked 73rd out of 150 on the Best-Performing Large Cities list, and moved up 40 places to #33 in the 2017 report. Modesto's rise in the Milken index ratings is due to strong outperformance of national averages on job and wage growth. The entire report may be read and downloaded at the Milken Institute Best-Performing Cities website.