10 Best Cities for Business Graduates to Move

Whether you’ve just graduated with your business degree or you’re a seasoned pro looking for a change of scenery, it’s time to think about where you’ll look for your next opportunity.

Knowing where to move isn’t as simple as finding a city that’s home to a few Fortune 500 companies and has a high concentration of takeout food (you’re a business major; you’re smarter than that). There are several factors you should consider before deciding where you’ll put down roots to start your new business career.

To save you a bit of time in your search, we’ve partnered with Business.org to review employment data and conduct cost of living analyses for America’s most populous metropolitan areas. From there, we went on to rank the best cities for business graduates to move.

There’s no point moving somewhere for a job if there are no jobs available, right? That’s why we put the most weight on open positions in a business or financial operations occupation.

We consulted the Bureau of Labor Statistics to discover the number of open positions per 1,000 jobs in the business sector in each metro area. We’ll display these as the percentage of vacant or open positions in the business field.

Securing a job is one thing, but being able to afford living in a particular city is another.

To find out how comfortable you’d be in your new locale, we looked at the percentage of income left over for discretionary spending after subtracting each metro area’s average cost of living from the median hourly wage of business professionals.

Unemployment rates are often a good barometer for the health of a particular city’s job market. Although it’s not the most important factor when considering where to move, it’s still a good reference to see an area’s long-term job prospects.

The Washington, DC, metro area is home to one of the most affluent and educated populations in the United States, so it won’t come as too much of a surprise to learn that the nation’s capital is also a booming business hub.

Washington earns the top spot on our list for two main reasons: it’s our highest-ranked city for open positions in business and finance, and it comes in second in cost of livability.

Washington, DC, also boasts the nation’s highest median hourly wage for business grads at $42.74, making it a great place to get a return on your educational investment.

If you’d like to take your career a bit closer to the great outdoors, the Mile-High City is a great place to look. The Denver metro area ranks second highest on our list for business job openings and lands in the top five in unemployment. So not only are there lots of positions to choose from, but low unemployment shows a strong economy in which to grow your career.

Median hourly wages rank fairly high, too, at $34.54—putting Denver’s business population in the top third for remaining income for discretionary spending.

Boston is home to some of the nation’s greatest cultural and historical sites—and it’s also home to a lot of jobs in business. Despite its steady supply of local graduates from the staggering number of colleges and universities in the area, the Boston metro still has the fifth-highest number of available positions in business and finance.

The Boston metro can be an expensive place to live, but it also boasts the fourth-highest median income on our list—making the move a bit more comfortable than you might think.

Sure, Seattle might be the birthplace of Amazon, but that certainly isn’t the only company that might lure you to the Pacific Northwest. The Seattle metro has the fourth-most open business positions on our list and demonstrates a strong business climate with only a 6.45% unemployment rate.

Although the Seattle metro has more open positions than Boston, a higher cost of livability pushes Seattle down to number four on our list.

The Minneapolis metro might be one of the coldest areas of the country, but a high number of open positions and low unemployment rates make it a great place to start your career.

Strong job prospects are certainly a reason to give Minneapolis a look for your first job, but the fact that IHS Global Insights identifies it as the second-largest economic center in the Midwest can make it a good option for the long haul, too.

If Southern California is calling your name, San Diego is your best bet to put your business degree to good use. It claims the number-two spot for lowest unemployment rates among the cities we assessed and comes in at number seven for cost of livability.

The number of job openings in the San Diego metro falls in the middle of our list with a 6.1% vacancy.

New York City is a major global hub for everything from banking and finance to media and the arts. Since it comes in at number nine in both job openings and cost of livability, it’s a solid pick no matter what stage of your career you’re in.

If you’re worried about job security, however, New York has a 9% unemployment rate—the ninth-highest rate out of all of the metros in our study.

The Greater Sacramento area lands at number eight on our list thanks in large part to its high number of open business and finance positions, which is at about an 8% vacancy—the third-highest on our list. This is in stark contrast to its high unemployment rate, which at 10.45% is the worst out of all the metro areas we analyzed.

The cost of livability helps Sacramento strike a balance, with business and finance grads seeing about 59% of their income left over from expenses for discretionary spending.

The Baltimore metro area sits in the upper third of our list in both open business positions and cost of livability. At $34.38, Baltimore’s median wage is in the middle of the pack in our list, and at only 40 miles from Washington, DC, a move to Baltimore may open up opportunities for you in our number-one city.

The Birthplace of America rounds out our top ten cities for business majors with strong showings in all three of our statistical categories. The Philadelphia metro area ranks at number thirteen in both open business positions and cost of livability, while an unemployment rate of 8% sits squarely in the middle at number fifteen in our list.

1. Washington DC
2. Denver, CO
3. Boston, MA
4. Seattle, WA
5. Minneapolis, MN
6. San Diego, CA
7. New York, NY
8. Sacramento, CA
9. Baltimore, MD
10. Philadelphia, PA
11. Kansas City, MO
12. Charlotte, NC
13. Dallas, TX
14. Portland, OR
15. Atlanta, GA
16. Los Angeles, CA
17. Riverside, CA
18. St. Louis, MO
19. Phoenix, AZ
20. Cincinnati, OH
21. San Antonio, TX
22. Detroit, MI
23. Houston, TX
24. Tampa, FL
25. Chicago, IL
26. San Francisco, CA
27. Miami, FL
28. Las Vegas, NV
29. Orlando, FL
30. Pittsburgh, PA

Has your business degree taken you to any of these cities? Do you think it will? Tell us in the comments below!

IHS Global Insight, “US Metro Economies”
Numbeo, “Cost of Living”
United States Census Bureau, “Annual Estimates of the Resident Population”
United States Census Bureau, “Employment Status”
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Occupational Employment Statistics”