South Florida Business Journal

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area moved up five spots to rank as the seventh-best place to launch a new business in 2010, according to a new Portfolio.com/bizjournals study.

Miami-Fort Lauderdale placed 12th last year.

Rankings were calculated through a formula that took account of population, employment and small-business growth. Austin, Texas, topped the list, followed by Baton Rouge, La.; Raleigh, N.C.; Charleston, S.C.; and Portland, Maine.

The highest scores in the study went to areas that have prosperous economies, are expanding rapidly and are densely packed with small businesses.

Among the top 10, South Florida stands out for the sheer number of small businesses and its ratio of small businesses to population in Bizjournals six-part formula that looked for the places that are most conducive to the creation and development of small businesses. South Florida’s 175,917 small businesses ranked first among the top 10 metro areas on the 100-city area scorecard. The region’s rate of 32.62 small businesses per 1,000 residents, based on 2007 data, trailed only Portland, Maine.

Still, the study does give indications of the economic stress in South Florida.

The region finished first in January 2006 before the recession. The latest report shows the region’s ranking was hampered by a 0.3 percent drop in private-sector employment from 2004 to 2009 and a relatively low 3.26 percent growth in population from 2003 to 2008.

In 2006, No. 1 South Florida was followed by two metros that were attracting record numbers of tourists, Las Vegas and Orlando. Markets that are heavily dependent on tourism don’t fare well in recessions.

The most promising region for entrepreneurs is the South, which is home to 12 of the 20 best metro areas for small businesses. Orlando ranked 17th; Tampa-St. Petersburg, 51st; Daytona Beach, 17th; and Lakeland, 86th.

The 100 metro areas in the Portfolio.com/bizjournals study group had a combined population of 199.1 million as of mid-2008, accounting for 65.5 percent of the national population of 304.1 million. Those same areas contained 4.99 million small businesses.

Last place in the small-business vitality rankings again belongs to Detroit, which continues to pay the price for the decline of the domestic automotive industry. The Detroit area lost 298,000 jobs during the past five years – an employment decline of 16.3 percent, easily the worst in any metro area. It also experienced short-term drops in population and the number of small businesses.

Portfolio writer G. Scott Thomas contributed to this report.