Coquitlam has continued to slip in the ranking of the best places to work in B.C., going from 11th overall in the province to 13th.
The annual study, released last month by BCBusiness magazine, is in its sixth year. In its first year, Coquitlam ranked third overall. In the intervening years, the city — and indeed much of Metro Vancouver — has fallen in the rankings.
Port Coquitlam, which was ranked within the top 10 in the 2014 survey, dropped from 14th in last year’s rankings to 26th in 2020.
In the top spots, Squamish, Whistler and the Township of Langley came in first, second and third, respectively.
“It’s more a story of some cold spots than it is about hot spots,” SFU associate professor of urban studies Peter Hall told the magazine.
In its analysis, BCBusiness noted that “persistently high housing prices in Metro Vancouver appear to be having a ripple effect, pushing working families to the suburbs and elsewhere.”
The survey was carried out with the help of Environics Analytics and examined 46 B.C. cities through the lens of three categories: income, household expenses and lifestyle, and municipal economic performance. Those three categories, in turn, were scored through 10 economic factors:
- average household income change;
- average household income under 35;
- five-year average household income growth;
- average household spending on recreation;
- average shelter spending;
- average value of primary real estate;
- average commute time in minutes;
- five-year population growth;
- housing starts per 10,000 residents;
- and unemployment rate.
Each category was given a weighting of 10%, save five-year average household income growth, which received 15% weight, and average value of primary real estate, which received 5%.
Port Moody did not qualify for the list. “We excluded bedroom communities such as Lake Country, Sooke and West Vancouver, which may offer a high quality of life but have relatively small job markets,” BCBusiness noted in a report.
