Business growth in Tennessee has moved from the suburbs to the cities in recent months. A quarterly summary of newly-formed companies finds urban areas are surging.
Statewide, the Secretary of State clocked 30,000 filings for new entities last year. This is a figure that’s been going up for the last four years.
But there have been some geographic ups-and-downs. University of Tennessee economist Bill Fox says suburban counties like Williamson, Rutherford and Blount have been carrying a lot of the load. But most recently, it’s been the four major cities in the state.
“There is a lot going on downtown. It’s visible to the naked eye. And you can see it in the data.”
Davidson County led the state, with nearly 1,700 new business filings in the last quarter of the year. Shelby County was right behind Nashville. And Fox says that was a pleasant surprise, since Memphis has been slower to recover from the recession.
During the fourth quarter, there were 1,515 business dissolutions which is a drop of nearly 15 percent from the same period in the prior year.
All together, Fox says the formation of new businesses should be a positive sign for continued economic growth in the state.
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