Raleigh Tops The List

Raleigh made Forbes Magazine this week. Just another sign that this was a great move for us (despite the whole preschool situation –– not that I am bitter or anything)

Best Cities For Jobs
To compile the rankings, we used five data points, weighted equally: Unemployment rate, job growth, income growth, median household income, and cost of living. We measured the largest 100 metropolitan areas, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, and obtained the data from Moody's economy.com. But we've updated the methodology since the last time we did this survey. In 2006, we used a five-year average for job growth and income growth, so the 2001 economic downturn was included in the data. That disproportionately hurt financial centers like New York and technology hubs like San Francisco and San Jose. This year, we only used growth data for 2003 through 2006, which boosted the major cities a bit. Last year, New York, San Francisco and Chicago were all in the bottom 15...

Raleigh, N.C., topped our list this year. The city has low unemployment, strong income and job growth, and high incomes--yet it still maintains a relatively low cost of living. Raleigh is part of the "research triangle," including Durham and Chapel Hill. Three major universities--Duke, the University of North Carolina, and North Carolina State University--make their homes in the area. The result: A city with good weather, a relatively low cost of living and a highly educated population. "There isn't much of a negative in Raleigh," says Steven Cochrane, an economist with Moody's economy.com, which provided us with the data for this story. "It has a lot of the amenities of Florida, except not the hurricanes."

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