State capital earns spot on Forbes’ new list.
Atlanta Is Top 20 City for Young Professionals
Recent
college graduates looking for a place to launch new careers might want to
consider Atlanta, which came in at 19 on Forbes’ 2016 list of the 20
Best Cities for Young Professionals.
To
rank the top 20 cities, Forbes analyzed the 100 largest metro areas in
the country for data on job growth, unemployment rates, pay, cost of living and
the percentage of the local population aged 25 or older with at least a
bachelor’s degree. Here’s how Atlanta stacked up:
- Average
yearly job growth from 2015 to 2017: 3.01 percent - Unemployment
rate (projected for 2016): 5.43 percent - Median
salary for 5 years or less experience: $51,600 - Cost
of living compared to national average: +0.6 percent - Population
with bachelor’s degree or higher: 35.84 percent
“Young
professionals are finding the city of Atlanta to be a great place to start
their careers because of the low cost of living, the job market is growing and
the Georgia economy is diversified,” says Nathan Humphrey, NFIB’s Georgia state
director. “Georgia is also a very well-run state. It has one of the lowest debt
per capita in the country and is consistently rated one of the best states in
the country to do business.”
Additionally,
according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Georgia as a whole had the
sixth highest job growth in the nation for the period from September 2014 to
September 2015. In that time, 114,522 new private sector jobs were added in the
Peach State, a 3.3 percent change from the previous year.
