Best Place For New Grads? DC Ranks 18th

• May 16, 2012

by Shilpi Paul

Courtesy of Atlantic Cities.

Since new data seems to consistently reveal the DC area’s status as a hot destination for young people, it was a bit of a shock to see the region place 18th on The Atlantic Cities recent ranking of the “Best Places for New College Grads,” behind towns like Ithaca, San Francisco, and New Haven.

While the importance that the rankings placed on an educated, young, unmarried population led to a list dominated by college towns (which explains why tiny Corvallis, Oregon, home of Oregon State University, beat DC), we have been hearing murmurs that the District’s appeal to job seekers may be in danger of dwindling.

Trulia’s Chief Economist Jed Kolko recently revealed that the city has fallen off of the list of top cities in regards to job growth. During most of the recession, DC was always among the top ten cities in terms of employment changes, said Kolko, but in the last 12 months the area’s job growth was at 1.4 percent, 41st out of the top 100 metros.

Since government employment wasn’t as hard hit as private-sector employment during the recession, DC kept growing while other cities suffered. Now, said Kolko, private-sector job growth is leading the recovery, and other cities are catching up with our area.

However, several models and reports released in the last few months still predict notable job growth in our area: the Center for Regional Analysis estimated that one million jobs will come to the area in the next 20 years, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently predicted that DC will have the country’s fastest growing job market over the next decade. Of course, models aren’t clairvoyant. The estimators will have to keep adjusting their projections as the facts come in.

As an aside, at a recent meeting led by the developers behind the McMillan redevelopment project, which will include significant health care office space, the developers defended their choice of office tenants by citing the BLS, which estimated that health care will be the fastest growing industry of the next decade.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/best_place_for_new_grads_dc_ranks_18th/5534