Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
San Francisco had the strongest economy overall among the cities we looked at.
- America's big cities are one of the main engines of the country's economy.
- We ranked the 30 biggest metro areas on five measures of economic health.
- The cities at the top of the list have thriving technology sectors. San Francisco took the top spot.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
America's big cities have an outsized role in the country's economic engine, and these cities in particular are thriving.
Business Insider looked at five measures of labor market and overall economic health for the 30 metropolitan areas with the largest populations: the unemployment rate, job-growth rate, per capita GDP, GDP growth, and average weekly wages. We combined those measures together to get an overall sense of economic health in the metro areas.
Read more about our methods and data sources here.
The top three cities on our ranking - Seattle, Austin, and San Francisco - all have thriving technology sectors, along with strong economies overall.
Here are the 15 big metro area economies with the strongest economies, ranked from worst to best: