For workers ages 18 to 34, Oklahoma City and Tulsa are among the 10 best markets in the country, according to a survey released Monday by Portfolio.com, a national business news site that provides analysis to small- and mid-sized businesses.
Based on 10 factors — including job growth, cost of living and the number of college-educated and employed adults — Oklahoma City ranks No. 6 and Tulsa, No. 8, among 67 metros with populations over 750,000.
The Southwest swept the survey with six of the top 14 places. Austin is No. 1, Houston, No. 5; Dallas-Fort Worth, No. 7; and San Antonio, No. 14. Behind Austin at the top of the list are Washington, D.C., Raleigh and Boston. Detroit sits at the bottom with Cleveland, Dayton, Tampa-St. Petersburg and Riverside-San Bernadino.
"Oklahoma City and Tulsa continue to have unusually good unemployment,” survey demographer G. Scott Thomas said. Based on 2008 data, Tulsa and Oklahoma City, with 5.8 percent and 6.2 percent respective unemployment, have the second and third lowest unemployment rates nationwide, Thomas said. Salt Lake City has the lowest at 4.7 percent, while Atlanta, Richmond and other places in the north and southeast have double-digit unemployment.
Another plus for Oklahoma City is its population base is the ninth youngest, Thomas said. Adults 18 to 34 comprise 24.9 percent of residents metro-wide, including the university towns of Edmond and Norman. Tulsa’s young adult base is 22.6 percent. Comparatively, Austin’s base is 28 percent, while Pittsburgh and Cleveland’s populations are below 20 percent.
From 2004 through 2009, Oklahoma City and Tulsa also saw job growth. Oklahoma City is the 11th best in the country, Thomas said, with an increase of 0.6 percent per year and 17,100 additional jobs overall. Tulsa, he said, had even stronger growth at 1.5 percent per year. Comparatively, Austin’s jobs grew an average of 2.8 percent every year, while most areas had fewer jobs including New Orleans, which lost 3 percent per year, and Detroit, which lost 343,700 jobs in the past five years.
The leading weakness with Oklahoma’s job market is its low concentration of high income among workers 45 and younger, Thomas said. Of household incomes of $100,000 or greater, Oklahoma City has 12.5 percent in that age bracket. Tulsa has 12.6 percent.
The most affluent young Americans live in the San Francisco-Bay area and the Northeast Corridor, where more than one-third of households earn $100,000 or more.
"Oklahoma metros are in the bottom 20, partly as a result of the cost of living,” Thomas said. The median rent for apartments, which generally reflect the lower cost of living, is $520 in Oklahoma City and $508 in Tulsa, he said. "They’re among the five lowest (rent-wise) in the country,” Thomas said. "The only lower are Pittsburgh and Buffalo, with Louisville stuck in between.”
The young adults survey is the latest installment of Portfolio.com’s U.S. Uncovered series — a monthly collection of exclusive, in-depth analyses of U.S. lifestyle trends. The series provides analysis of the American lifestyle and business trends of interest to the $13.7 trillion market of small- and mid-sized businesses, which are expected to spend $1.83 trillion this year, according to data compiled annually by American City Business Journals.
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