The Best And Worst Cities To Look For A Job

The unemployment rate in the U.S. was still 9.4 percent in July, but some cities are better than others to look for a job. Of the top 50 metro areas, Washington, D.C., is the easiest for unemployed workers to find a job, while Detroit is the hardest, according to a new Job Market Competition index put together by job search engine Indeed.

The index ranks cities based on how many unemployed people there are compared to job listings. For every one unemployed person in Washington, D.C., for example, there are six job postings. Whereas in Detroit, there is only one job posting for every 18 unemployed people. The higher the ratio of job postings to unemployed, the more chances there are of landing a job.

The top ten cities in the index for finding jobs (and their corresponding ratios of job postings to unemployed) are:

  1. Washington, DC (6:1)
  2. Jacksonville, FL (3:1)
  3. Baltimore, MD (1:1)
  4. Salt Lake City, UT (1:2)
  5. New York, NY (1:2)
  6. San Jose, CA (1:2)
  7. Hartford, CT (1:2)
  8. Oklahoma City, OK (1:3)
  9. Austin, TX (1:3)
  10. Boston, MA (1:3)

The worst ten cities for job searches are:

    41. Buffalo, NY (1:6)
    42. Orlando, FL (1:6)
    43. Sacramento, CA (1:6)
    44. Rochester, NY (1:6)
    45. Chicago, IL (1:7)
    46. Portland, OR (1:7)
    47. Los Angeles, CA (1:8)
    48. Riverside, CA (1:9)
    49. Miami, FL (1:10)
    50. Detroit, MI (1:18)