What other regions are likely to lag, even amid a strengthening recovery? The list includes Sun Belt metro areas where the housing bubble hit hardest and job growth has not revived, such as Las Vegas (51st) and Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif. (49th). In these cities real per capita household income remains almost 20% below 2007 levels. With fewer people able to afford new homes, these areas have roughly 8% fewer jobs than five years ago.

Other bottom-dwellers include several industrial cities where even a resurgence in manufacturing has failed to erase the catastrophic losses suffered in the recession. Detroit ranks dead last at 52nd; Providence, R.I., 50th; and Cleveland 48th. All three have fewer people than in 2007 and at least 5% fewer jobs than.

These differentials between regions could widen further in the future, as the impact of the energy revolution deepens and the current social media craze begins to die down. This happened after the first dot-com bust at the beginning of the last decade, sending roughly half of California’s tech workers out of the industry or out of the state.