Having trouble getting a new job? Go East, young job seeker, to find the most opportunities.
The current economic recovery is slow-going, unemployment is on the rise, and after an earlier period of sustained growth, hiring activity has begun to stagnate. Yet despite these reports of gloom and doom, the news isn't all bad for those entering the job market. In fact, a number of cities across the U.S. offer significantly more available job openings than the national average. Where are these metro areas that offer a better chance of finding job search success? Job seekers with a predilection to wander would be best-served avoiding warm-weather destinations in places like the Southeast, and targeting major cities in the Northeast instead.
For the fourth month in a row, Washington, D.C., led all U.S. cities with the highest number of job openings per capita by a significant margin. Helped by an increase in demand for federal jobs, this hiring continues to fuel an economic recovery in the nation’s capital, which widened its lead over second-place Boston as the best U.S. city to find a job. Besides government jobs, hiring in the tech sector has been one of the lone bright spots of 2009, and once again high-tech centers San Francisco and Seattle benefited, finishing in third and fourth place, respectively.
Surprisingly, despite the generally poor performance of the Midwest as a whole (last out of all U.S. regions), Chicago actually managed to post a per capita increase in job availability, rising two spots to sixth overall. On the other hand, after a strong month in September, Atlanta suffered a steep loss and fell three spots, finishing in eighth place just ahead of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Outside the top eight, other cities which boasted significant growth included Cleveland (up five spots), Louisville (up three spots) and St. Louis (up two spots). Conversely, Minneapolis was hit harder than most, falling four spots to 21st place overall.
Surveying 30 major metro areas across the U.S., the CareerCast.com/JobSerf Employment Index measures the volume of managerial job openings per capita each month to determine the best and worst locations for job seekers. Overall, the nation's top cities continued to gain ground at the expense of weaker ones, with the top five metro averaging more than four times the number of job openings as the bottom five. As a result, a struggling job seeker in Detroit, for example, needs to think hard about relocating to a more promising market, since the number of available jobs will increase exponentially. And to get the most out of such a move, it may be best to consider one of the eight best cities to find a managerial job in September:
| City | Index Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Washington, D.C. | 1 | +/-0 |
| Boston | 2 | +/-0 |
| San Francisco | 3 | +/-0 |
| Seattle | 4 | +/-0 |
| Baltimore | 5 | +1 |
| Chicago | 6 | +2 |
| New York | 7 | +/-0 |
| Atlanta | 8 | -3 |
Finishing just below the eighth-best cutoff point, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Denver also offered a relatively good volume of available jobs per capita in October, but cities further down didn't perform nearly as well. For the fourth straight month, Riverside, in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, trailed all others as the worst city in the U.S. to find a white-collar job. Stung by the housing crisis and the West's poor performance in general, Riverside continued to drop managerial job opportunities last month, losing more ground even as it sat in last place. On the other hand, while neither Detroit nor Memphis escaped second or third place, both gained ground in October. The same cannot be for Miami, however, which fell for the second month in a row, dropping from sixth to fourth place after placing outside the bottom eight entirely in August.
Other notable changes in October included movement by Tampa Bay, which dropped to fifth place, and Louisville, which saw enough improvement to move up from fourth to become the seventh-worst city to find a job. In addition, Cincinnati returned to the worst-cities list in eighth place, taking the place of Indianapolis. If you're looking to move but want to be sure you'll be able to get a job, avoiding the following areas is likely paramount, since they comprise October's eight worst cities to find a managerial job:
| City | Index Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Riverside, CA | 1 | +/-0 |
| Detroit | 2 | +/-0 |
| Memphis | 3 | +/-0 |
| Miami | 4 | +1 |
| Tampa | 5 | +1 |
| Phoenix | 6 | +1 |
| Louisville | 7 | -3 |
| Cincinnati | 8 | +2 |
Getting a good new job takes more than just picking the right city – to help you find true job search success, the CareerCast.com/JobSerf Employment Index breaks down hiring each month nationally, by region and across different job levels, so you can target your hunt accordingly. For more info see our complete report on U.S. online job-posting activity for October 2009:
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