Best US cities for jobs and careers

Job opportunities, wages, career growth, and the strength of the local economy.

Other rankings

Overall Environment Transportation Safety Health Amenities Shops Education Quality of Life Cost of Living

Top 25 cities

What jobs & employment means here

Whether there's work in your field, whether wages are competitive against local costs, and whether you could change jobs without changing city. Residents also judge economic direction — whether employers are arriving or leaving.

Why it's worth weighting

A single-employer town is a risk that only shows up when something goes wrong. Depth in your industry means you can leave a bad job without moving house, which matters more over a career than any single salary offer — particularly for dual-income households needing two viable markets.

What to check before you commit

1Count the employers in your field, not the job postings. Three real options beats fifty listings from one company.
2If you're moving as a couple, check both careers. The second job is usually the harder one.
3Ask whether remote work is genuinely accepted locally or whether the good roles expect office presence.
4Look at what's happened to major employers over the last five years, not just who's there today.

How these rankings work

Every score comes from residents rating the place they live, not from an index we calculated. People score jobs & employment from 0 to 10 alongside nine other life aspects, and write about what works and what doesn't. Each review is read by a person before it appears.

Cities are ranked on the mean of their employment scores. Any city with at least one approved review is eligible, which means a highly-rated city with two reviews can currently outrank a well-known one with five — worth keeping in mind when reading the table above.

We're early. The rankings get more reliable with every review, so if you know one of these cities, add your own.