Job Market Strength

Composite labor-market score from unemployment, wages, labor-force participation, employment ratio, and industry diversity.

Scale0-100

Higher values rank better for this score.

How It's Calculated

The latest published score is normalized to a 0-100 scale. The method below explains what the score rewards, with technical source metadata available for audit.

1
Unemployment, labor-force participation, employment-population ratio, wage opportunity, and economic diversity are converted to population-weighted percentile-rank component scores.
2
Unemployment is inverse-ranked so lower unemployment scores higher
3
earnings and household income are ranked on a log scale.
4
The composite is 30% low unemployment, 25% wage opportunity, 15% labor-force participation, 20% employment-population ratio, and 10% economic diversity.

Technical details

Score TypeMaster Score

Read from the current master score table for this criterion.

Ranking BasisSingle Score

The top 10 below ignore your blended relocation weights and sort only by Job Market Strength.

No source details available for this score.

What This Score Means

Job Market Strength rewards places with lower unemployment, stronger wages, higher labor-force participation, stronger employment ratios, and a more diversified resident industry mix.

Statistics Feeding This Score

Employment status
ACS population age 16+, civilian labor force, employed residents, and unemployed residents.
Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
Median earnings and income
ACS median earnings for residents with earnings plus median household income.
Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
Industry mix
ACS resident employment counts across broad industry sectors.
Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
Adjusted rates and diversity
Derived unemployment, participation, employment-population, and industry-diversity inputs after smoothing.
Source: Derived from ACS inputs

Source Data

Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-YearCensus ACS 5-year estimates for housing, income, population, occupation, education, and race/ethnicity inputs at place, county, or CBSA geography depending on the score.

Known Limits

These are ACS place-level resident proxies, not live job postings, employer locations, occupation-specific salary offers, or metro commute-shed demand.
ACS values are multi-year estimates and can lag current labor-market changes.
Small labor-force and industry denominators are shrunk toward all-place means.
Wage Opportunity is not cost-of-living adjusted; combine it with affordability scores for buying-power preferences.

Top 10 Locations

Ranked by Job Market Strength.

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