Seattle Among Nation's Top 10 Boom Towns of the Future

BNET is doing a series on ten "boom towns" across the nation where job growth is predicted to enter the double-digit range between 2008 and 2018. Jobs of the future, they say, will go "to the cities with the industries and the entrepreneurial incentives in place to support a highly educated, tech-savvy workforce."

Seattle makes that boom town list, with a 12 percent increase. We're "building on past successes":

For decades, it spawned companies that grew into job-creation machines--and stuck around the area with those jobs: Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Starbucks, Costco, Expediters International, and even retail stalwart Nordstrom, which opened its first store there at the beginning of the 20th century.

While not free of the scent of PR puffery, this is based partly on Bureau of Labor Statistics projections, with a side bet on demographic trends: right now, the largest two age groups are 50-year-olds and 20-year-olds. The hypothesis is that 50s set will come to Seattle for the pre-retirement lifestyle, while the 20-somethings will flock to the UW.

Before you yawn, and produce a thick volume of past "boom towns of the future" that are still anxiously awaiting the railroad to arrive, consider this rundown of quarterly results:

• Starbucks beat analysts' expectations
• Amazon's sales soared
• Microsoft set a revenue record
• Boeing's profit margins are up

And Nordstrom had strong March sales and Costco is increasing its cash dividend. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes Seattle seem like its own little business oasis.