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Northwest Arkansas is among the nation’s top job creators and best places for business and careers, a national magazine reported today.

The Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers Metropolitan Statistical Area was ranked No. 24 in the 18th annual list of Best Places for Business and Careers published by Forbes.

Denver topped the list for the second year in a row and three Utah MSAs — Provo, Salt Lake City and Ogden — each ranked in the top 10.

Job growth is consistently one of its strongest performance areas. It ranked No. 11 in job growth this year.

Northwest Arkansas has a history of being among the nation’s best on the overall list published by Forbes. In a four-year stretch that started in 2006, Northwest Arkansas ranked No. 9, No. 8, No. 17 and No. 4, respectively.

All of Northwest Arkansas’ peer regions are among the top overall performers ranked by Forbes in 2016.

Those peers, which are used as benchmarks in the annual State of the Northwest Arkansas Region Report, include Raleigh (No. 3), Des Moines (No. 6), Austin (No. 11), Durham-Chapel Hill (No. 48) and Madison (No. 59).

The Forbes list ranks 200 metropolitan areas.

Special thanks to our major investors for their support of the Northwest Arkansas Council and our work in the region: