WWD List: Honolulu Takes Top Spot in Most Costly City to Do BusinessIHS Markit ranked metro areas using a "business cost index."

[Collection]Aside from being some of the most costly U.S. cities to live in, Honolulu, San Jose and San Francisco are also costly places to do business. In its most recent report, IHS Markit ranked the top U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, using its “Business Cost Index.” The Urban Honolulu MSA in Hawaii came in first as the most costly to do business in, followed by the San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara MSA in California. In third was the San Francisco/Oakland/Hayward MSA in California while the Bridgeport/Stamford/Norwalk MSA in Connecticut was fourth. The New York metro area, which includes Newark and Jersey City in New Jersey, was number five. All of these MSAs exceeded the national average by more than 25 percent, researchers at IHS Markit noted. The firm also examined the least-costly areas to do business. These cities included Morristown, Tenn., Beckley, West Va., and Valdosta, Ga. — which were all 15 percent lower than the national average. “The Business Cost Index, or BCI, shows that more expensive metros are generally clustered around the East and West Coasts; these metropolitan areas tend to have higher than average wages, high energy costs and high real estate costs due to high population density and land constraints,” authors of the report

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