Mapping the Top Job Markets

Florida digs into Renn's analysis, which covers the 51 U.S. metros with populations of one million people or more and covers the year 2010-2011, and finds that Austin and San Jose led the United States in job growth last year. These top performers are unlikely to surprise many, based on their knowledge-driven and creative economies. Making the top ten were some surprises, however, including legacy cities Detroit and Pittsburgh.

Also of interest, Florida found that "For all the talk of their resilience, greater Washington, D.C., ranked just 29th while greater New York ranked 25th. Sacramento, Birmingham, Cleveland, Virginia Beach, and Providence had the slowest rates of job creation. Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco also had relatively low rates of job creation last year."

Is searching for causes behind the growth figures, Florida and colleague Charlotta Mellander found only a few with high levels of correlation. Among those, the strongest was the level of unionization.

"Despite the rebound in jobs in Detroit and Pittsburgh, overall, job growth appears to be occurring in metros with lower levels of unionization. The correlation between job growth and unionization was the highest of any in out [sic] analysis (-.49)."