Miami, Hialeah on WalletHub's Best Places to Find a Job in 2018
Location, location, location. It plays a major factor in real estate transactions — just look at buzzy neighborhoods like Wynwood, named one of America’s hottest neighborhoods, or Little Havana, a hotspot for investors. And location is just as key for finding a job, according to a recent study from WalletHub.
In its 2018 list of the Best Places to Find a Job, WalletHub noted that someone’s “luck of finding work depends largely on location.” Fortunately for South Floridians, living amid sunny, sandy beaches also appears to hold job opportunities.
Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Hialeah all made the list of the 182 best cities to find work. Fort Lauderdale came in first among the three cities, echoing findings from the Urban Land Institute, at No. 72. Miami ranked No. 85, and Hialeah clocked in toward the end of the list at No. 176. The study used sources like the U.S. Census Bureau and HUD, and Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) to analyze 26 metrics, including salary, job security, industry variety, commute time, and housing affordability, among others.
The study was released before Amazon’s announcement that Miami made the short list for potential HQ2 locations — a move which could result in as many as 50,000 new jobs. But even if Amazon goes elsewhere (after all, Miami is the farthest away from Amazon’s original Seattle headquarters), WalletHub’s findings hold up.
Look a bit closer at the results, and you’ll see that Miami technically outranked Fort Lauderdale for its job market rank (51 and 56 respectively). Fort Lauderdale’s higher socioeconomic value — in which housing affordability plays a role — gave it the edge over Miami in overall rankings.
While Hialeah scored a spot on the list, it’s notably toward the bottom and was also listed among the lowest median income of the cities included in the study. Still, the suburban area has a lot to offer for homebuyers in particular, including affordable housing, access to parks and recreation, and above-average school ratings.
Altogether, the three cities were also included in a promising report from the BLS released in December, showing that Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach is the nation’s second-fastest growing metro area for jobs based on the most recent data available. That data, from October 2017, showed that the Miami metro had job growth of 2.4 percent compared with the previous year. That’s nearly double the national average for job growth in the same period, which was measured at 1.4 percent. Unemployment in the Miami metro also fell from 5.1 percent in 2016 to 3.9 percent in 2017.
Statewide, Florida saw lots of play on WalletHub’s list. Orlando ranked No. 13, followed by Tampa (No. 16), St. Petersburg (46), Fort Lauderdale (72), Jacksonville (76), Miami (85), Cape Coral (93), Tallahassee (106), Port St. Lucie (109), Pembroke Pines (119), and Hialeah (176).