Students graduating from college in 2016 are lucky to be entering a job market that has improved substantially from the past few years. Still, the availability of good jobs varies substantially depending on where you live.
Slideshow: Best Cities for Jobs in 2016
Career site Glassdoor crunched the numbers to come up with the best cities in the U.S. for jobs this year. The results illustrate the continued growth of tech jobs, with Silicon Valley’s San Jose and San Francisco topping the list, followed by Seattle, which boasts a fairly busy tech scene of its own.
The list reflects several factors, including hiring opportunity, work-life balance, job satisfaction and the local cost of living.
Employers expect to hire 5.2 percent more new graduates from the class of 2016 than they hired from the class of 2015, according to an April report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
New grads have a big incentive to find high-paying jobs fast: They’re the most indebted in history. Those who have borrowed to pay for school owe an average of more than $37,000, a balance that’s about $2,000 higher than last year’s graduates.
Those with the best shot of nabbing high-paying jobs are those in science, engineering, technology and math fields, according to a separate report by NACE. Engineering students can expect the highest starting salary, an average of $64,891, up from $62,998 last year. Education majors, by comparison, were projected to earn an average of $34,891 in their first year in the workforce.
Click here for the best cities for jobs in 2016.
