Several cool peer cities are in this list. Madison, D.C, Austin, San Francisco, Boston. Fun to see Fargo on top! The students learning, living, working, and playing downtown have helped drive the revitalization of Downtown and there are a ton of underdeveloped flat lots ripe for mixed use development.
Continuing to target and prioritizing the core helps us recruit and retain talent. All these high rankings have a common denominator, it’s the vibrant core and opportunities to engage that differentiates us from the rest, not the anytown USA strip-malls and sparse segregated cul-de-sac developments.
We have some new opportunities/offers to work with peer cities to leverage this further to continue to recruit and retain working and competing with some peer cities.
Let’s grow well and target areas where we get the most value and create the most interest for interesting people. http://www.businessinsider.com/best-cities-for-college-grads-2014-5?op=1
Another example of becoming a more dynamic city is the unique student led bikeshare program announced May 16th 2014. It’s been so much fun working with them and Tom Smith for these past 3 years. This was a key initiative listed in Fargo GO2030
Forum story on how Great Rides Bikeshare developed> http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/434858/
The Great Rides Bikeshare system will be installed in the fall. You’re all invited to learn more at: https://www.facebook.com/GreatRidesBikeshare.
Let’s keep pedaling Fargo forward!
Here’s the article in Business Insider this week:
1. Fargo, ND
Fargo had the lowest unemployment of all of the cities we looked at, with a remarkably low 3.3% rate. Fargo also has a huge number of young adults, with 28.4% of the population falling between 20 and 34. Fargoans are also more likely to be single than others, with 37.6% of the population having never been married. The city is also quite well educated, with 37.1% of Fargoans having at least a bachelor’s degree. Housing is also quite affordable, with 67.5% of renting households paying less than 35% of their incomes on housing expenses.
North Dakota as a state has seen a renaissance in the past couple of years, largely powered by the oil boom in the Bakken formation in the western part of the state. While Fargo is in the east, as North Dakota’s largest city, the boom may have had some effect on Fargo’s economy. Fargo also is the home of North Dakota State University, and we have seen many college towns on this list.
The only measure where Fargo lags behind the other cities on this list is in income. Median worker earnings were just $30,104, slightly below the national median of $30,155.
The 13 Best Cities For Brand-New College Grads
- MAY 12, 2014, 12:20 PM
Oli Scarff/Getty Images
For people in their mid-20s to early 30s who have finished their education and are starting their careers, figuring out where to live can be difficult.
With local economies varying from place to place and recent grads potentially looking for a partner to start a family, it’s good to be around other people in your age range.
To try to figure out where newly minted young professionals should live, we evaluated the 200 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. on a variety of measures that might be important to recent grads.
We used six measures to evaluate the 200 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. From theCensus Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey, we took the share of the population of each city that had young adults between the ages of 20 and 34, the percent of people who had never been married as a proxy for single people, the share of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher, the median earnings for a worker in the city, and the percentage of rental households that paid less than 35% of monthly income on housing expenses as a measure of apartment affordability.
We also took the March 2014 unemployment figures for each from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics.
Each city was given a ranking score from 0 to 100 for each of these measures, and then those rankings were averaged together to find the final ranking.
12 (tie). Sioux Falls, SD
Sioux Falls had an extremely low unemployment rate at 3.9% in March. Sioux Falls also, by one measure, has the most affordable apartment rent in the country: 71.1% of apartment households spent less than 35% of their monthly incomes on housing costs, a much higher proportion than in any of the other cities.
Something that might give a 20- or 30-something college graduate pause is that Sioux Falls has somewhat fewer highly educated people than the other cities on this list, with just 29.2% of its residents holding a bachelor’s degree or higher.
12 (tie). Omaha, NE
REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
Investor Warren Buffett
Similar to Sioux Falls, Omaha has very low unemployment, at 4.5%, and very affordable apartments, with 63.5% of renting households paying less than 35% of monthly income on gross rent.
Unfortunately, for single college grads trying to decide where to settle down, Omaha has fewer singles than the other cities on this list, with just 32% of its population having never been married.
11. Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
Stuart Wilson/Getty Images
The Twin Cities are economically dynamic, home to Target and many other large employers. It’s not that surprising that Minneapolis and St. Paul are very well educated with 39.5% of residents having a bachelor’s or higher. Median worker earnings are solid at $36,358 a year, and unemployment is relatively low at 4.9%.
On the downside, there are fewer people in the earlier stages of their careers in Minneapolis, with just 21.1% of the population falling between 20 and 34.
10. San Francisco/Oakland, CA
Shutterstock
Over the last decade, the Bay Area has become a natural destination for ambitious and highly educated people, being the heart of the tech industry. A full 45% of San Franciscans have at least a bachelor’s degree, and median earnings for workers are a very impressive $41,265.
9. Columbus, OH
YouTube
Ohio State University’s marching band forms a man firing a cannon.
Columbus scored reasonably well on each of our measures. Unemployment was at 5.0%, the median worker earned $31,589, and 34.1% of residents had a bachelor’s degree or higher.
8. Seattle/Tacoma, WA
Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman
Seattle has solid median worker earnings, at $36,864, and 37.7% of Seattleites hold bachelor’s degrees or advanced degrees. However, there are fewer singles than most of the other top-ranked cities, with just 32.8% of Seattleites having never been married.
7. Durham/Chapel Hill, NC
The research triangle is very well educated. A full 44.7% of the population of Durham/Chapel Hill holds at least a bachelor’s degree, as one might expect from the home of Duke and the University of North Carolina. There are also a fair number of single people in the area, with a better than average 36.3% of residents having never been married.
6. Lincoln, NE
l’interdit via flickr Creative Commons
Over a quarter of the population of Lincoln falls in our young-adult age range: 25.2% are between the ages of 20 and 34. Unemployment is very low at 3.5%, but having a job is not as lucrative as in many of our other cities. Median worker earnings were just $27,100.
5. Boston, MA
Reuters
The 2014 Boston Marathon
Boston is home to a ridiculous number of colleges, and this is reflected by the 42.9% of Bostonians with bachelor’s or advanced degrees. Jobs in Boston also pay well, with median worker earnings at $37,954.
4. Madison, WI
Like the other college-centered cities on this list, Madison is young and well educated. Young adults between the ages of 20 and 34 make up 24.7% of Madison’s population, and 42.6% of the adult population holds at least a bachelor’s. Madison has a fairly low unemployment rate of 4.7%.
3. Austin, TX
Austin looks a lot like Madison by our measures. Just over a quarter, 25.1%, of Austinites are between 20 and 34, and 40.5% of Austin’s population have bachelor’s or advance degrees. Austin had a solid unemployment rate of 4.4% in March.
2. Washington, DC
AP Photo
Protestors gather for the 1963 March on Washington
The capital had the highest median worker earnings of any of the 200 cities we looked at, with the median worker making $44,452, much higher than the national median of $30,155. Washington attracts the educated, with 48.2% of the adult population holding at least a bachelor’s degree.
1. Fargo, ND
Fargo had the lowest unemployment of all of the cities we looked at, with a remarkably low 3.3% rate. Fargo also has a huge number of young adults, with 28.4% of the population falling between 20 and 34. Fargoans are also more likely to be single than others, with 37.6% of the population having never been married. The city is also quite well educated, with 37.1% of Fargoans having at least a bachelor’s degree. Housing is also quite affordable, with 67.5% of renting households paying less than 35% of their incomes on housing expenses.
North Dakota as a state has seen a renaissance in the past couple of years, largely powered by the oil boom in the Bakken formation in the western part of the state. While Fargo is in the east, as North Dakota’s largest city, the boom may have had some effect on Fargo’s economy. Fargo also is the home of North Dakota State University, and we have seen many college towns on this list.
The only measure where Fargo lags behind the other cities on this list is in income. Median worker earnings were just $30,104, slightly below the national median of $30,155.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-cities-for-college-grads-2014-5?op=1#ixzz31mcRMqiB