Find a Job You Really Want In
These are the places that have a manageable commute, nice weather, and a good deli that doesn’t break the bank.
At Zippia, we aim to help you through all parts of your career, including finding the best places to spend eight hours of your day, five days a week, for over forty years.
With that in mind, we set out to determine which places in West Virginia are the best of the best when it comes to offering quality working conditions. We looked at the numbers and were left with this set of the ten best places to work in West Virginia:
- Vienna
- Williamstown
- Parkersburg
- Alum Creek
- Blennerhassett
- South Charleston
- Bethlehem
- St. Albans
- Glenville
- Charleston
Read on to see why these places will make you almost excited to get up and go to work in the morning.
How We Determined The Best Cities In West Virginia To Work
There are certain things that everybody dislikes about work, not the least of which is the time it takes to get there.
So after some research into what people identify as the worst parts of their day, we decided upon the following set of criteria to determine places that provide the ideal work conditions:
- Commute time (Shorter is better)
- Cost of living (Lower is better)
- Crime (Lower is better)
- Weather/Comfort Index (Higher is better)
Basically, if it’s a short commute to work, your lunch doesn’t hurt your wallet, you don’t need to wear rain boots, and you feel safe, then it’s a nice place to have an office.
We got the data for the 100 biggest places in the satate and then ranked each place from one to 100 for each criteria, with one being the best in any given category.
Finally, we took the average rank across all criteria, with the place posting the lowest overall score taking home the title “Best Place In West Virginia To Work”.
Our data comes from Sperling’s Best Places.
Read on to learn the specifics of how the ten best places in the Mountain State became something of a worker’s paradise.
1. Vienna
Population: 10,721
People With Bachelors: 59.1%
2. Williamstown
Population: 2,911
People With Bachelors: 75.1%
3. Parkersburg
Population: 31,482
People With Bachelors: 47.7%
4. Alum Creek
Population: 1,739
People With Bachelors: 49.1%
5. Blennerhassett
Population: 3,199
People With Bachelors: 51.6%
6. South Charleston
Population: 13,402
People With Bachelors: 60.7%
7. Bethlehem
Population: 2,541
People With Bachelors: 61.3%
8. St. Albans
Population: 11,004
People With Bachelors: 52.8%
9. Glenville
Population: 2,053
People With Bachelors: 49.1%
10. Charleston
Population: 51,224
People With Bachelors: 62.1%
Author
Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.
