Top 25 Cities for Young Professionals

SmartAsset crunched the numbers to find the best cities for young professionals. By comparing 150 cities across nine metrics, they identified the top 25 cities. Where young people decide to start laying their roots can influence their own professional trajectory, but also influence the area itself. One key finding of the study was the prevalence of the Midwest. Seven of the top 10 cities are in the Midwest, and these cities have low median rent along with a high percentage of people between the ages of 25 and 34. Did your city make the list? Read more to find out.

We considered 150 cities, comparing them across the following metrics: percentage of the population between 25 and 34, county level unemployment rate from May 2020, labor force participation rate for young professionals, median rent, cost of living, density of entertainment establishments, median earnings for full-time workers, four-year change in median earnings and median rent as a percentage of full-time workers earnings. For details on our data sources and how we put all the information together to create our final rankings, check out the Data and Methodology section below.

Key Findings
Content to rent. The average rent across the top 10 cities in our study is $939, well under the national average of $1,058. And the young professionals in these 10 cities can meet that expense, too, as the average rent as a percentage of full-time workers’ earnings doesn’t exceed 23%, according to our data. By contrast, the average rent as a percentage of full-time workers’ earnings across all 150 cities in our study is 29.78%.

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