Springfield moves up on fastest-growing cities list

Springfield rose 40 spots on personal finance website WalletHub.com’s annual list of the fasting-growing U.S. cities.

At No. 319, Springfield was the fifth-highest ranked Missouri city on the list, following No. 154 O’Fallon, No. 219 Kansas City, No. 280 Lee’s Summit and No. 301 Columbia, according to a news release. Last year, Springfield ranked No. 359.

The WalletHub study examined 17 metrics under the two broad categories of socio-demographics, and jobs and economy. The 515 cities examined could earn up to 100 points from metrics including working-age population, unemployment rate, the number of businesses and regional gross domestic product growth per capita, according to the release.

While scoring 41.89 overall, Springfield ranked No. 252 in the jobs and economy category and No. 328 in socio-demographics. Additionally, Springfield ranked No. 165 among midsize cities with a population of 100,000-300,000.

At the top of the overall list is Lehigh Acres, Florida, followed by Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and Bend, Oregon.