Are You Where The Jobs Are?

The best and worst places for job creation according to Gallup

Where’s the best place to find a job? It might just be where the most jobs are created.

When it comes to employment Houston ranks as the number one job creation environment among the nation’s 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas (MSAs) with San Diego coming in last according to Gallup’s 2012-2013 Jobs Creation Index*score which is based on reports of hiring versus layoffs from workers who live in those areas. While the top five MSA’s are scattered across the country, California has the distinction of holding three of the bottom five spots.

The top five MSAs for job creation include Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX; Columbus, OH; Salt Lake City, UT; Orlando-Kissimmee, FL; and Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ.

The bottom five MSA’s are Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA; Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA; Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA; New York-North New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA; and San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA.

The MSAs which showed the most growth were Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC; Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX; Austin-Round Rock, TX; Salt Lake City, UT; and Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI.

Gallup notes the good news is that the Job Creation Index was still in positive territory for all 50 MSA’s in 2012-2013 indicating that all of these “important population centers were, generally speaking, hiring.” This overall hiring is good for the U.S. economy as a whole.

*Gallup’s Job Creation Index score is based on the percentage of workers who say their employer is hiring and expanding its workforce versus the percentage saying their employer is letting people go and reducing its workforce.

For the complete Job Creation Index visit Gallup.