Score
Low Unemployment
Lower ACS unemployment rates score higher after small-denominator smoothing.
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.
How the ranking is built
Low Unemployment rewards places with lower ACS resident unemployment rates.
- 1
Unemployed residents are divided by the civilian labor force.
- 2
Small denominators are shrunk toward the all-place mean.
- 3
The adjusted rate is inverse population-weighted percentile-ranked, so lower unemployment scores higher.
Technical details
Read from the current master score table for this criterion.
The top 10 below ignore your blended relocation weights and sort only by Low Unemployment.
What This Score Means
Low Unemployment rewards places with lower ACS resident unemployment rates.
Statistics Feeding This Score
- Civilian labor forceSource: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
ACS civilian labor force age 16 and over.
- Unemployed residentsSource: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
ACS unemployed residents age 16 and over in the civilian labor force.
- Adjusted unemployment rateSource: Derived from ACS inputs
Unemployment rate after small-denominator shrinkage.
Source Data
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 Low Unemployment.