Starting Your Career? You Might Want to try Another City According to Study

To those who live here, Jersey City it is a vibrant, multi-ethnic agglomeration like no other; a small town feel with all the benefits of its bigger neighbor across the river. Filled with bars, restaurants, artists, entrepreneurs and every nationality under the sun, it would seem to be an excellent place to start out one’s career. Not according to one new study, however.

The ever-prolific financial website WalletHub — the same people that year after year rank Jersey City the most diverse city in America — scored over 180 cities for “relative market strength and overall livability” for recent college graduates using “28 key metrics” falling under two broad categories, “professional opportunities” and “quality of life.”

Jersey City came in at 168 overall, mercifully ahead of New York City at 180 and Newark, which ranked dead last at 182. Number one? Salt Lake City.

The study, however, should be taken with a humongous grain of salt.  While metrics under “professional opportunities” including, for instance, the availability of entry-level jobs and unemployment rate are, one assumes, fairly objective, the “quality of life” metrics, including “fun-friendliness” and “singles friendliness” (which, of course, WalletHub has already opined on in previous studies) are less so. For instance, in those two categories Jersey City was rated behind such swinging hotspots as Fort Wayne Indiana and Omaha, Nebraska.

Say no more.