Find a Job You Really Want In
There are a lot of ways to evaluate the direction a city is headed in.
You can look at jobs, employment, or big name companies located there. However, you could also look at population growth.
For better or worse, cities need a strong tax base to continue to grow.
Even better, to truly see a cities upward trajectory, they need a strong, growing base of young workers. However, not all cities are growing–and even those that are growing aren’t always seeing growth in the right demographic.
To find the cities that are heading in the right direction, we analyzed data to see cities that saw the biggest increase in 25-to-29 year olds.
Frisco, Texas saw a truly impressive 19% increase. Other cities with more ready name recognition including Atlanta, Knoxville, and Cleveland are among the 25 cities with the largest increase in 25-to-29 year olds.
Since people vote with their feet, it is easy to see these 25 cities have more to offer younger workers than most.
However, not all cities are seeing an increase in 25-to-29 year olds. In fact, some are seeing a significant decline.
Mesquite, Texas saw the largest decrease of the 275 cities. Unfortunately, Mesquite and the other cities with a declining youth population struggle to retain their youngest workers.
How We Determined This
This was fairly easy. We simply used data from the Census’ American Community Survey to compare the number of individuals 25-to-29 in 2019 and 2018.
The greater the growth, the more younger residents the city is home to. Vice versa, the greater the decrease, the less younger residents the city is home to.
We examined the 275 cities with the most households. We opted to examine 25-to-29 year olds. Our reasoning is the age of 25 gives young workers adequate time to receive and education and begin pursuing their careers in earnest.
Population Decline is never good
Ultimately, at the end of the day, population growth is never a positive signal for a city.
Cities rely on a growing population (and growing tax base) to support infrastructure, schools, and other endeavors. More than that, cities need a talented workforce to attract large companies that can promote regional growth.
While we can’t guarantee that all the cities with a booming population of young workers offer abundant jobs and other promising opportunities, there has to be a reason they are the location so many young workers choose to call home.
Author
Kathy is the head of content at Zippia with a knack for engaging audiences. Prior to joining Zippia, Kathy worked at Gateway Blend growing audiences across diverse brands. She graduated from Troy University with a degree in Social Science Education.
