As the recovery from the Great Recession stretches into its fifth year, the locus of economic momentum has shifted. In the early years of the recession, the cities that created the most jobs — sometimes the only ones — were either government- or military-dominated (Washington, D.C.;  Kileen-Temple-Fort Hood, Texas), or were powered by the energy boom in Texas, Oklahoma and the northern Great Plains.

Now the recovery has shifted to a new group of cities that have benefited from the boom on Wall Street and the parallel IPO surge in Silicon Valley — call them asset inflation cities. Last year the S&P 500 clocked its biggest rise since 1997, helped by aggressive monetary easing by the Federal Reserve and a return to the stock market by investors who had retreated to the sidelines after the financial crisis. The high times have brought on a surge in IPOs: 2013 was the busiest year for public offerings in over a decade, and the pace has if anything quickened this year, with healthcare and technology offerings leading the way. M&A has also surged, with some very impressive valuations in the tech sector, such as Facebook’s $19 billion purchase of 50-person What’s App. The biggest beneficiaries employment-wise: the Bay Area, Silicon Valley and New York City….

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