Oklahoma City #14 On Best Cities For College Grads List

BusinessWeek recently announced the 2010 “Top Cities for College Grads” list. Not surprising to me, a number of the 30 cities are in the south.

BusinessWeek’s Methodology: “Starting with the cities with the largest numbers of employers posting entry-level positions on the After College site, Bloomberg BusinessWeek compiled the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on each city’s average annual pay and unemployment. From the Council for Community & Economic Research (C2ER), we obtained data on the cost of living in each city, which we used to adjust each city’s pay figure. The jobs data and adjusted average annual salary each contributed 40 percent of the final ranking, while unemployment contributed 20 percent. Some cities that appeared in last year’s ranking lacked a sufficient number of job-posting employers and so are absent from this one. Those cities include Chicago, Indianapolis, and Memphis.”

The Top 30

1. Houston, TX
2. Washington, DC
3. Dallas, TX
4. Atlanta, GA
5. Austin, TX
6. Minneapolis, MN
7. Pittsburgh, PA
8. Denver, CO
9. Columbus, OH
10. Fort Worth, TX
11. Boston, MA
12. New York, NY
13. Tulsa, OK
14. Oklahoma City, OK
15. Kansas City, KS
16. Philadelphia, PA
17. Cleveland, OH
18. Charlotte, NC
19. Phoenix, AZ
20. Dayton, OH
21. Salt Lake City, UT
22. Milwaukee, WI
23. Cincinnati, OH
24. San Antonio, TX
25. Richmond, VA
26. Knoxville, TN
27. Tucson, AZ
28. Seattle, WA
29. Portland, OR
30. Tampa, FL

From BusinessWeek

14. Oklahoma City

2009 Rank:: 17
Entry-Level Employers: 25
Average Annual Pay: $38,090
Cost of Living Index: 91.9
Unemployment Rate: 5.9 percent
Once dominated by the oil industry, Oklahoma City now counts agriculture, energy, aviation, and health care among its driving economic forces. The Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center trains air traffic controllers, while Tinker Air Force Base is home to the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, which provides maintenance for the Air Force’s most sophisticated weapons. Thanks to these employers, Oklahoma City has the lowest unemployment rate on the list. A resilient community, Oklahoma City has created both a landscaped memorial at the site of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, and the Museum & Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.