While Huntsville slipped to No. 2 in the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Places to Live in the U.S. rankings, its fall in another national list was a little more dramatic.

In the Milken Institute’s 2023 Best Performing Cities in the U.S. report, the Rocket City fell from a top tier No. 12 ranking to a second tier No. 40 ranking among America’s 200 largest cities.

But local residents should not be alarmed by the fall, according to Maggie Switek, director of regional economics in the Milken Institute.

“The rankings not only reflect what is happening in a particular city, in this case Huntsville, but also what is happening around Huntsville,” she said. “If one city moves up, others have to move down.”

The rankings this year are based on tracking data from 2021, when the economy began to recover from Covid-19 lockdowns. Job growth and wage growth from the leisure and hospitality sectors outpaced the same in the high-tech sector.

Cities with economies weighted toward the leisure and hospitality industries moved up. Cities with economies weighted toward high tech such as Huntsville, San Francisco and Seattle ended up in the second tier. Seattle dropped from No. 6 to 34.