Chilliwack is not scaling any heights as the top city in the province for income growth, but it's not at the bottom either.
Chilliwack is in the middle of the pack, ranked at No. 19 among 37 cities ranked in the BC Business 'Best Cities for Work' list.
They pegged Chilliwack with 12.53 per cent income growth, and used data from Environics Analytics, as well as Statistics Canada and Canada Revenue Agency to rank cities according to their job markets.
They zeroed in on income growth over five years, and made it the most "heavily weighted indicator" of the seven used in the calculation of the rankings, along with population, household income, labour participation and more.
"More so than average incomes, income growth reflects a city’s job market trajectory: what’s booming, and how much it’s booming," according the accompanying text on the Best Cities rankings.
"To capture some of that, we’ve created this heat map, which plots each of our ranked cities by five-year household income growth."
See it all bcbusiness.ca/best-cities-for-work-in-bc-our-ranking-of-all-36.
They only looked at cities with more than 10,000 residents, and excluded "bedroom communities" like West Van, Port Moody and White Rock where the salaries are high, but there are few jobs.
Oil-and-gas-sector boom-town Fort St. John came in as the No. 1 ranked city, leading the pack at 18.20 per cent, while Terrace, No. 34, experienced the slowest income growth at 7.87 per cent.
Abbotsford-Mission was close to Chilliwack, ranked at No. 20, with the same level of income growth, 12.53 per cent.
Where Chilliwack and Abbotsford differed slightly was average household income, which was $75,844 for Chilliwack, jumping to $83,818 in Abbotsford-Mission.
But unemployment is lower in Chilliwack at 6.82 per cent, compared to 8.22 per cent in Abby-Mission.
Victoria ranked at No. 16, while Kelowna took the No. 17 spot.
jfeinberg@theprogress.com
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