Worst Cities to Move for Young Professionals
Packing up and moving for a job is a lot more than a career choice. It’s choosing a post-collegiate environment for an important time in the life of any young professional. It sets the stage for all other life decisions and opportunities since it may be the place where you find your life partner or meet a future boss.
To help make this choice easier, AIER compiled a list of the country’s best cities to start your career, based on nine economic, demographic and quality of life variables. We are looking forward to releasing this best-cities ranking, known as the Employment Destinations Index, tomorrow.
Understandably, some young professionals may receive job opportunities in locations not highlighted on our list. Today, let’s take a look at a list of the worst places to move for young professionals based on data from our index.
Economics
For those starting off in their careers, the burden of rent may seem unbearable, especially for the majority of college graduates who are facing student loan debt. Some shocking realties came to light by examining cities with low wages and high rents. In a number of cities, more than 30 percent of income is spent on rent, including San Bernardino, California; Orlando, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee; and Rocky Mount, North Carolina. And staggeringly in Yuma, Arizona, over 50 percent of income for the average young professional is spent on rent.
Aside from rent, some cities lack a lively labor market. We all know that getting a job, especially your first job, can be a numbers game. The following places have the wrong kind of numbers. Las Vegas, Nevada; Jackson, Michigan; Lima, Ohio; and a number of cities in California showed unemployment rates in the double digits. And Lake Havasu City-Kingman, Arizona, and a number of cities in Florida, have labor force participation rates under 50 percent.
Demographics
Our best-cities ranking features locations with a high percentage of the population having a college degree. And then there are those with the opposite situation: Some cities had less than 20 percent of the population with a college degree, including El Paso and Beaumont, Texas; Monroe, Michigan; and Stockton, San Bernardino, Bakersfield, Merced, and Visalia-Porterville, California.
Quality of Life
If you want to avoid long treks to work, or awful commuter traffic, you may want to reconsider some cities, like Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama; and Muskegon, Michigan. Further, some areas lacked crucial “third places” like cafes, clubs, bars, and parks, and rated extremely low in the arts and entertainment category. For a vibrant life outside of the office, these cities came up short on our ranking: St. Louis, Missouri; Lima, Ohio; Gadsden, Alabama; and, perhaps surprisingly, Memphis, Tennessee.
And so, combining these factors, the following locations ranked lowest on our ranking, with #1 receiving the worst marks in each size category:
Major Metros (More than 2.5 million residents):
- Detroit, Michigan
- Tampa, Florida
- San Bernardino, California
- St Louis, Missouri
Midsize Metros (1 million-2.5 million):
- Las Vegas, Nevada
- Birmingham, Alabama
- Memphis, Tennessee
- Jacksonville, Florida
- Louisville, Kentucky
Small Metros (250,000-1 million):
Smallest Metros (Below 250,000):
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