How are we doing? In an era of hypercompetition among metropolitan areas, it's good to constantly assess our strengths and weaknesses. By most measures, Minneapolis-St. Paul is doing quite well.

We have the nation's 13th-largest metro economy — second only to Chicago's in the Midwest. Our population of 3.5 million is growing, albeit slower than that of most of our peers. Our housing costs are relatively low. Yet our median income is high: seventh-highest among the 50 largest metro markets, behind only San Jose, Calif.; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Boston; Baltimore, and Seattle. We rank low on poverty and crime, and high on educational attainment, workforce participation, health, culture and civic energy.

Where do we stumble? We lead the nation in racial disparity, partly because our white poverty rate is so low. We lag also in net domestic in-migration — not many native-born Americans are moving here. We lack the share of young adults that our toughest competitors have. And, despite our educational strength, we're short on STEM jobs — those in science, technology, engineering and math.

How do we know all this? St. Louis has told us. Every few years, St. Louis' East-West Gateway Council of Governments publishes "Where We Stand," an exhaustive report that now includes more than 200 quality-of-life indicators for the 50 most populous metro areas. In addition, Greater MSP, this region's business-recruiting arm, has assembled a "dashboard" of highly focused information that measures the Twin Cities against 11 top competitors. Here's a sampling of how we stack up:

• Above average: Household income, families with children, international in-migration, college degrees, air service, homeownership, housing affordability, households with computers and Internet service, workforce participation, social mobility, wages, air quality, drinking water quality, health insurance coverage, exercise, charitable donations, volunteerism, nonprofit organizations, women's earnings, voting, cultural assets and access to parks. But we're also high in racial disparity, binge drinking, daily miles driven and property tax reliance.

• Average: Housing starts, home values, rents, concentrated poverty, homelessness, freeway lane miles, travel times, driving alone, transit ridership, walking and biking, children enrolled in preschool, education spending, business start-ups and smoking.

• Below average: Venture capital, domestic in-migration, transit service, federal largesse and access to healthy food. But to our credit, we're also low in unemployment, school dropouts, housing costs, housing vacancies, foreclosures, single-parent families, crime, deficient bridges, traffic congestion, transit costs, prevalence of government income support, poverty, obesity, infant deaths, births to teen mothers, heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, mental distress, suicide, car crashes, drug deaths and sales tax reliance.

What's most striking about all of these data is that when compared to the other top 50 metros we look stellar, but when measured against our toughest peers we look only average. On issues of race, venture capital, young talent, quality jobs and transit, we have much work to do.