Job seekers this summer season should think of heading to smaller cities with more than one industry. Places like western Michigan’s Grand Rapids are continuing to rank very high for new job opportunities.
Newly minted college graduates head out in droves to new cities this time of year, setting up shop in New York, Washington and San Francisco. It doesn’t hurt their luck that job openings are at record levels in the United States.
Unfortunately for some of those job seekers, employment opportunities are not as plentiful in big metropolises as in some smaller cities around the country, and the places that report the highest expected increases in employment this quarter are often not the most attractive to new graduates.
Fortunately for job seekers who like Michigan, job prospects look especially good in Grand Rapids.
Grand Rapids tops the list of the most promising employment markets, according to a new report from human resource consulting firm ManpowerGroup. Grand Rapids’ secret weapon is resiliency and having multiple sectors “broadening the ecosystem of talent,” ManpowerGroup’s Chris Layden said. Multi-industry cities tend to perform best in employment outlook and hiring plans, he added.
Manpower Group compiles a report every quarter after conducting 11,000 interviews in the top 100 metropolitan areas in all 50 states. Employers are asked their hiring plans for the upcoming quarter. This aligns with job trends across the country. The survey noted positive hiring in all four regions in the U.S. The job hiring outlook in durable goods manufacturing is the highest it has been in over nine years, reported Manpower Senior Vice President Michael Stull.
Grand Rapids, Michigan’s second largest city, is home to multiple industries that attract and utilize new sources of talent. The city did not get the moniker “The Furniture City” by accident, but it has expanded beyond that limiting description and now is home to an economically diverse job environment, spread across healthcare, automotive, manufacturing and information technology. “Technological disruption is rapidly changing skills needs, especially in manufacturing as the marketplace transitions from typical labor to more advanced roles,” according to Stull.
A willingness to adapt as technology changes manufacturing jobs has helped the city. But it is its diversity of industries that Layden credits with earning Grand Rapids its steady place at the top of the list. This quarter, 36% of its employers reported that they expected to hire. That is well above the national average.
Most of the cities that top the list every quarter stay there. Other cities that have continued to have a positive employment outlook are more sought-after destinations with greater populations than Grand Rapids, such as Charlotte and Austin and Chicago.For the small city in Western Michigan, it has to get everything right, Layden reported.“There’s a bigger risk to them if there’s a brain drain. It’s a lot harder to get someone to Michigan.”
Because of this, he said, Grand Rapids has to employ unique strategies to capture and keep talent. “It really comes down to the fact that they have a huge cross section of sectors,” he said, and that they maintain good coordination between the public and private sectors and encourage CEO engagement.
While Grand Rapids topped the game this quarter, other cities were not far behind. Raleigh, Charlotte, Colorado Springs and Des Moines followed closely in the survey. A year ago, Albany topped the list, but now the city’s employers expect a 23% hiring increase, still impressive but far below Grand Rapids’s 36%. On the other side, Jackson, Mississippi has an 8% hiring outlook and Hartford bottoms out the list at 0%.
Overall, job prospects in the United States continue to look up this quarter. One in four employers reported they were planning to hire and only 4% said they expected a decrease in employment.
See gallery for the best and worst cities for job prospects.
