The Washington, DC, area ranked No. 5 in the Milken Institute's annual "Best-Performing Cities" index for 2012. That's up from No. 17 in 2011.

The Milken Institute, a think tank located in Santa Monica, CA, bases its rankings on how well metropolitan areas do at creating and sustaining jobs.

The top five cities in the 2012 report are:

• San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara, CA
• Austin/Round Rock/San Marcos, TX
• Raleigh/Cary, NC
• Houston/Sugar Land/Baytown, TX
• Washington, DC/Arlington/Alexandria, VA

Milken compiles the ratings based on nine metrics:

• 5-year job growth
• 1-year job growth
• 5-year wage/salary growth
• 1-year wage/salary growth
• short-term job growth
• 5-year relative high-tech Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
• 1-year relative high-tech Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
• high-tech GDP location quotient
• number of high-tech industries with GDP

The first five factors carry double the weight of the last four in Milken's ranking system.

The DC area's ranking has been somewhat of a roller coaster over the past decade, placing No. 19 in 2003, No. 11 in 2004, No. 7 in 2005, then falling out of the Top 20 until ranking No. 6 in 2010, then falling to No. 17 in 2011.

Its high ranking of No. 5 in 2012 was "anchored by steady federal spending" and "strong growth in high-tech output," according to a news statement from the Milken Institute.

View a full interactive map of historical ranking data on the Milken's Institute's website.