Best Cities For Young Professionals 2016

                                

Recent college graduates face better job prospects these days than they did in the midst of the Great Recession–but they also are typically saddled by debt. Seven out of 10 graduating college seniors had student loans in 2014 (latest data available), with average debt loads of $28,950, according to the nonprofit Institute for College Access & Success.

That’s why new grads–as well as young professionals only a few years out of school–would be wise to consider carefully where to start their careers. To find out which cities offer the best overall prospects for college-educated workers with five years of experience or less, we crunched data on job growth, unemployment rates, pay and cost of living in America’s largest 100 metro areas. The result is our 2016 list of The 20 Best Cities For Young Professionals.

 The cities that made our list generally fall into two categories. The first is job-heavy economic powerhouses where the pay is high and the cost of living is too. Metro areas that fall into the first category are familiar names: San Francisco (No. 1) and Silicon Valley (No. 2) shoot to the top of our list thanks to their red-hot technology and biotech job markets and high salaries.

  The second category of cities leading our list are underrated mid-tier markets, where the pay is still decent but, unlike the overpriced Bay Area, the cost of living is a relative bargain. Think Columbus, Ohio (No. 7); Warren, Mich. (No. 9); and Indianapolis, Ind. (No. 10). Each of these underrated cities boasts strong projected annual job growth over a three-year period (Columbus 2.5%, Warren 2.48%, and Indianapolis 2.67%). The median salary for early career professionals in these places isn’t as high as in Silicon Valley (No. 1 at $78,400), but those dollars will stretch a lot farther in these markets than in Silicon Valley, where the cost of living is the very worst of the 100 cities we looked at (nearly 60% above the national average). Median pay for workers with five years or less of experience in Columbus is $49,800 (46th among the metros), cost of living is 5% below the national average.  Warren’s median pay is $52,100 (27^th) and its cost of living 8% below the national average. Indianapolis has a median pay for early careerists of $48,200 (60^th), and a cost of living 7.5% lower than the national average.

 When it comes to starting a career, everything is a trade-off. Workers need to consider which places make the most sense for their particular industries and career paths. But they also should look realistically at what pay v. cost-of-living trade-off they’re willing to make. For some, Silicon Valley’s high cost of living might be worth the opportunity to gain experience at Google, Apple, or LinkedIn. Then again, would-be entrepreneurs might find that Columbus, with its lower-key emerging tech scene, reasonable cost of living, and reduced competition for VC funding, is a less stressful fit. And if it’s simply quality of life and a corporate job you’re after, perhaps it makes sense to choose Omaha, Neb, which has the Fab Five, a group of Fortune 500 companies that includes Berkshire Hathaway, Union Pacific Corp., ConAgra Foods, Kiewit Corporation and Mutual of Omaha. We hope our 2016 list of Best Cities For Young Professionals will help you make the right call.

 To find the 20 Best Cities For Young Professionals, we analyzed the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (cities and their surrounding suburbs) as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, ranking them on five factors weighted equally. We considered local unemployment rates (projected 2016 annual) and job growth projections (using 2015 nu bers and 2016 and 2017 projections), provided by Moody’s and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Next we considered median salaries for college graduates with five years or less of work experience, using data provided by Payscale.com. We rated how far these salaries might go with the help of Moody’s cost-of-living index. Finally, we looked at Census data on the percentage of the local population aged 25 and older with bachelor’s degrees or higher—a data point that could indicate the likelihood of a strong professional network for college-educated workers, as well as an educated workforce that is going to continue to draw opportunity to that area.

 Not surprisingly, San Francisco and the suburbs to its south top our list at No. 1.  An increasing number of tech companies–Salesforce, Uber, AirBnB, and Zenefits among them–have set up shop in the city, where many of their workers prefer to live instead of in more suburban Silicon Valley. The views are amazing and the pay is, too, but residents of that city (51% have college degrees) will pay through the nose for those perks. “I think that everybody knows that San Francisco is an expensive place to live, but it also has high wages and a strong job market to help new workers support a lifestyle here,” says Juliana Bunim, VP of strategic communications at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. “Besides the economic and professional implications for people, it’s an extremely beautiful place to live.”