An analysis of several measures of economic health — overall economic growth, wages, jobs and unemployment — found Grand Rapids has had the most vibrant economy among the state's metropolitan statistical areas in recent years.

The Grand Rapids region, comprised of Kent, Ottawa, Barry and Montcalm counties, enjoyed the most robust job growth — 21 percent, more than 90,000 jobs — between 2012 and 2015. And though it has some of the lower average wages in the state, they rose a healthy 3.6 percent over the same three years, second best among the state's 14 metropolitan regions.

Those 14 metropolitan regions, designated by the U.S. Census Bureau, cover just 25 of Michigan's 83 counties, but more than 90 percent of the state's economic output.

With a nearly 10 percent increase in domestic gross domestic product (the total value of all goods and services produced) over three years, the Grand Rapids region had the 57th fastest growth among the nation's 386 metropolitan regions.

The regions surrounding Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo and Detroit rounded out the top four in Michigan's overall economic rankings. The size of the regions vary considerably: Metro Detroit, covering six counties, had 2015 GDP of more than $221 billion, more than four times the size of Grand Rapids. Bay County, with an economy of $2.8 billion, was the smallest.

West Michigan has benefited from its more diversified manufacturing base that doesn't rely as heavily on the auto industry. Long said worker productivity has been higher in West Michigan and wages lower, lowering overall cost and making the region attractive to employers.

Indeed, the region's 21 percent jump in jobs between 2012 and 2015 is nearly triple the 7.7 percent increase in Monroe County, the region with the second-highest boost in jobs.

"I've got people in the market paying $14 an hour and they can't find people," Long said.

But the recovery from the Great Recession has proved more elusive in other parts of the state, notably the Saginaw and Bay City regions where continued declines in economic output and stagnant to declining wages have tempered the overall picture of the state's economy.

Saginaw and Bay counties — though neighbors, each is considered its own economic region by the government — have seen their regional economies shrink over both one and three years. Once humming with auto jobs, along with nearby Flint, the region along I-75 has struggled like many of the smaller urban areas that previously shared in the state's once-robust and dominant auto manufacturing sector.

"There used to be more manufacturing jobs in these small and rural areas," said Don Grimes, economist and senior research specialist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Research on Labor, Employment and the Economy. "The real prosperity and the real growth is going to be in those larger metro areas."

The three largest regions in the state — Detroit, Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor — were third, second and fourth in terms of one-year GDP gains, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, which publishes the statistics every two years. Flint, which suffered one of the steepest economic declines in the state during the recession, posted the biggest one-year gain, 2.6 percent. Still, its economy is only 93 percent of what it was in 2007, among the slowest recoveries in the state. Only the economies of the Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Muskegon regions are bigger than they were before the recession.

"A big part of the problem is demographics. A lot of young people and immigrants don't want to live in rural areas and small urban areas," Grimes said.