Article source: ConstructConnect

It’s always helpful to know which U.S. cities have the hottest economies and one way to make that assessment is to look at their labor markets.

Table 1 ranks the 51 largest U.S. urban centers in two ways: (1) by year over year jobs creation, from fastest to slowest; and (2) by current unemployment rates. (For ease of presentation on social media, Table 1 is a condensed version of Table 3, which shows the results for the full set of 51 cities.)

Dallas-Ft Worth (+7.2%) is number one for y/y jobs growth, with Las Vegas (+6.3%) second, Houston (+6.1%) third, and Austin fourth (+6.0%). It’s astonishing that three cities in Texas are in the Top 4. San Antonio is well down the chart.

The ranking for unemployment rates is headed by Minneapolis-St Paul (2.0%), with Salt Lake City (2.1%), and San Jose (2.2%) close behind. But here’s a remarkable achievement. All four of Florida’s major cities are in the Top 10: Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Orlando.

Also notice that two renowned West Coast high-tech centers have exceptionally low unemployment rates: San Jose (2.2%), and San Francisco (2.5%).

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Article source: ConstructConnect

The other day, I wrote about U.S. city labor markets. Today’s article presents the same subject matter and graphics for Canada.

Table 1 ranks 33 Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) in Canada according to two criteria: (1) year-over-year change in number of total jobs, fastest to slowest; and (2) unemployment rates, lowest to highest.

The Top 5 cities with both good jobs growth and low unemployment rates are shaded green. The next best tier of 5 CMAs appears with purple shading.

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