Seattle and the Puget Sound area seem to be popping up on those "top ten" and "best places to..." lists with increasing regularity.
This time it's "Ten Great Cities for College Grads" according to Kiplinger.com. Note they didn't say "best" cities, but the financial website-newsletter did use the same criteria that landed Seattle at #2 on its "Ten Best Cities for the Next Decade", which was published last summer - namely "places that focus on out-of-the-box thinking".
The newsletter says Seattle is....
...a global hub not just for freight, but also for information technology, clean technology and life sciences. Forty-one percent of Seattle's businesses -- most of them mid-sized -- say they plan to add jobs this year, and Amazon recently posted want ads for 1,900 new jobs in its South Lake Union office. A studio in the hip Capitol Hill neighborhood runs well under $1,000. Take your savings to a theater, club or cafe -- the Emerald City is renowned for its music, theater and coffee culture. Pros: Stable job scene, relatively low crime rate Cons: Limited public transit, sluggish post-recession recovery. And you better like rain.
Kiplinger also laid out some fairly attractive stats about the fair Emerald City:
- Median monthly rent: $942 (nat. average, $817)
- Median income (2009): $33,372 (nat. average, $30,402)
- Income growth (2005 to 2009): 5.0%
- Unemployment rate: 9.2% (nat. average, 9.2%)
- Percentage of residents ages 20-24: 6.7% (nat. average, 7.0%)
One thing's for sure. The job prospects for Washington state in general aren't getting any worse - the latest figures show the jobless rate is down to 9.1 percent compared to 9.8 percent a year ago.
