The Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia metro and Raleigh both landed in among the top 10 on Forbes’ annual ranking of the best cities for jobs, The Charlotte region was ranked number 5 and Raleigh number 7 on the Forbes list.
The top ten included four other Southern Cities, with seven in the top 15. Dallas, Texas led the list, followed by Austin, TX, Nashville, TN; San Jose, CA; Charlotte; Orlando, FL; San Francisco; Seattle, WA; and Riverside-San Bernadino, CA.
Raleigh saw 2.6 percent job growth with the total numbering 623,000 in 2017, according to the magazine. Charlotte, with 1.2 million jobs in 2017, had 3 percent job growth.
Forbes noted that three heavyweights, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago lost ground. New York had only 1.7 percent job growth in 2017 and landed at 24th on the list. Los Angeles placed at “a mediocre 48th with 1.3 percent job growth last year. Chicago did even worse, placing at 55th with only 0.4 percent job growth.
Austin, at 2nd place, had a strong 3.4 percent job growth last year and a diversified economy in which it boasts high wage jobs in both tech and business services, the magazine says.
“Other affordable areas like No. 3 Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tenn., No. 5 Charlotte-Concord- Gastonia, N.C., and No. 6 Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Fla., all enjoy the same pattern of rapid population growth and mounting in-migration from the rest of the country,” write Forbes scribes Joel Kotkin and Michael Shires.
Job growth slowed in former hot spots such as San Francisco and Seattle, where the cost of living is daunting.
