RALEIGH – For Triangle residents looking for work, there’s good news: the latest WRAL TechWire Jobs Report found more than 284,000 advertisements for open jobs despite a recent decline in job openings in the region.

But even with thousands of open jobs, Raleigh doesn’t rank among the top 35 regions of the country if you’re a job seeker looking for work.

According to an analysis from WalletHub, Raleigh ranks as only the 36th best place in the U.S. to find a job.  And Durham ranks even lower, at 63rd in the nation.

Other Southeastern cities fared better, as Austin, Texas, ranked 20th overall in the study, and Atlanta, Georgia, ranked 24th.  The top spot in the analysis went to San Francisco.

Raleigh also recently underperformed Austin, Texas, in a ranking of which city was best prepared for a smart city future, with Austin taking the top spot while Raleigh ranked 25th out of the 50 cities in the ProptechOS study.  However, the analysis conducted by ProptechOS ranked Raleigh’s tech jobs market ahead of Austin, at 14th overall, while the Texas city fell to 21st.

But all of this could change, said Professor John Quinterno of Duke University.

“While North Carolina’s labor market has performed well during the recovery from the worst of the COVID-linked recession in early 2020, conditions have softened since the summer,” said Quinterno in an interview with WRAL TechWire.  “The path forward in 2023 is unclear and is very dependent on larger conditions.”

That includes whether we’re heading for a downturn or a recession, as some economists anticipate.

“One important factor is whether the Federal Reserve’s sustained tightening of interest rates eventually pushes the economy into a recession and how severe any resulting recession is,” said Quinterno.

Jobs remain available across Triangle but openings drop to lowest in 13 months

Behind the study

The WalletHub rankings looked at 182 cities in the United States, comparing them across 32 key indicators of job market strength.

Both Durham and Raleigh performed among the best cities in one of these metrics: the unemployment rate.  The WalletHub study found that Durham and Austin both have unemployment rates of 2.7% while Raleigh’s unemployment rate is 3.0%, ahead of the national average of 3.7%.

“A recession could push up the local unemployment rate and cause local establishments to close altogether,” said Quinterno.  “Escalating interest rates also can slow economic activity as people delay big ticket purchases or find themselves unable to pay higher interest rates for homes.”

But while the Triangle housing market has moderated, some, in the fourth quarter of 2022, there were already signs that the market may heat up again in the spring, despite mortgage interest rates that are nearly double where they were a year ago.

And that’s perhaps due, in part, to another measure where Raleigh outperforms the rest of the nation, according to WalletHub.  That’s the median annual income, which the study found to be $75,048, ranking first in the WalletHub data set.

Even San Francisco, known for high-paying technology and science jobs, only has a median annual income measuring at $61,379.  And Austin’s median annual income ranked 11th, at $74,854.  And housing affordability is far better in Raleigh, ranking 59th, than in Austin, ranking 101st, and in San Francisco, ranking 176th of 182 cities.

“The labor market is already essentially where it was pre-pandemic in some sense,” said Joel Suarez, an assistant professor in the department of labor studies at City University of New York School of Labor & Urban Studies, in responding to an inquiry from WalletHub.  “If we continue to have strong job growth numbers, will continue to increase interest rates, effectively attempting to fight inflation by sacrificing the most vulnerable American workers.”

Looking for a job? These 47 Triangle companies wanting to hire nearly 3,000