Milken report shows D.M. drops on list of best-performing cities BY MICHAEL CRUMB, Senior Staff Writer Thursday, April 1, 2021 3:09 PM Des Moines had the fifth-steepest decline in the Milken Institute’s Best-Performing Cities list, in part because of slow wage growth in high-tech industries, an author of the report said. The report, "Best-Performing Cities 2021: Foundation for Growth and Recovery," shows that Des Moines fell 54 spots from 79 in 2020 to 133 this year in the large city category for metropolitan areas with populations at or above 270,000. “I think the key question for Des Moines is the quality and the wage of the jobs that are being created, and what do they pay, and if they’re not where we want them to be, how do we get there?” said Misael Galdamez, one of authors of the report from the nonpartisan think tank and its Center for Regional Economics.