Now that 2017 has arrived, many job seekers will have vowed to put extra effort into finding a new and better job. Some of those may even be open to moving to new cities in order to do so.
With that in mind, we took a look at some of the cities that could hold better jobs prospects than others—and some whose opportunities leave much to be desired. We got a snapshot of those dynamics from a recently released report from WalletHub – a personal finance and credit report company – which scores cities by their projected qualities as places to find work. We took the company’s findings and folded them into a slideshow of the 10 top cities for finding work this year, which you can view below.
In putting together its study, WalletHub compared 150 of the most populated U.S. cities across 23 key indicators of job-market strength. Sources for the data were the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development, Council for Community and Economic Research, Indeed, Center for Neighborhood Technology, ManpowerGroup, Chmura Economics & Analytics, Chegg and WalletHub’s own research.
Metrics like Job Opportunities, Employment Growth, Employment Outlook and Unemployment Rate received the most weight, according to WalletHub. All of the metrics were ranked into two main categories: “job market” and “Socioeconomic Environment.”
For a list of the worst cities for finding jobs in the coming year, see the list below:
The most job opportunities, according to the report, are in Orlando, Salt Lake City and Atlanta, in that order. On the low end, the least opportunity is in Detroit, Fresno and Stockton , California, with Detroit holding the least appeal.
In terms of employment growth, the highest ranking cities were two California cities: Rancho Cucamonga and Ontario. The lowest growth was in Irvine, California, and Cape Coral, Florida.
Austin, Texas; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota tied for first place in the category of lowest unemployment rate. The highest rate of unemployment was in Detroit, Fresno and Stockton, California.
