As graduation approaches, many college students might be asking what comes next—especially in a labor market that has cooled for the kinds of jobs that recent grads typically fill. In a tougher market, knowing where the best opportunities are matters more than ever.
For the third year, we set out to answer a few questions facing new graduates. How strong is the job market? Where will my starting salary go the farthest? And where are recent graduates most likely to be hired?
Ultimately, we were looking for the best combination of pay, affordability, and opportunity.
To find out, we turned to the anonymized ADP payroll data of more than 409,000 people aged 20 to 29 at more than 20,000 U.S. employers, spanning January 2025 through January 2026. We then ranked 53 U.S. metro areas with at least one million residents based on wages, hiring, and cost of living.
This year’s results look very different than last year’s. None of 2025’s top four metro areas held their ground, and some of the new contenders might come as a surprise. But after three years of reporting on the top metros, a few continue to show up near the top—and a few others remain stuck near the bottom.
Here’s how U.S. metros stacked up.
Birmingham and Tampa ascend
After two years at the top, Raleigh, N.C., was swept aside by another economic southern powerhouse: Birmingham-Hoover, Ala., which climbed from fifth place to first.
Greater Birmingham’s rise was driven by strong hiring and rapid wage growth. Between January 2025 and January 2026, the metro posted a strong 2.8 percent hiring rate, and median annual wages for recent graduates jumped more than 16 percent to $59,004. The region was more affordable than all but two of the metros we studied.
Florida’s Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater region made one of the biggest leaps, jumping from 26th in our rankings to second place. The region’s hiring rate increased from 2.6 percent to 3.4 percent, one of the fastest paces in our sample.
California’s San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and Columbus, Ohio, rounded out the top four, both also propelled by improved hiring. Greater San Jose rose from 14th place to third after its hiring rate edged up from 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent. While the region boasted the highest wages in our sample, it still fell short on affordability.
Greater Columbus jumped the rankings after its pace of hiring accelerated from 2.4 percent to 3.1 percent. Whereas affordability tripped up San Jose, wages held back Columbus.
These metros lagged
At the bottom of the rankings, we found some familiar names. Salt Lake City and California’s Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario region both returned to the bottom four. Salt Lake has weaker hiring than all but one metro, as well as below-median wages and affordability. Riverside has lower college grad wages than all but one metro, and below-median hiring and affordability.
San Diego-Carlsbad, Calif., and Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, which straddles Oregon and Washington, rounded out the bottom four. Both offer relatively strong wages, but with some of the slowest hiring rates in our sample. Affordability, too, lagged. Even graduates who do land jobs in these metros face a tough financial tradeoff in the form of high cost of living.
The Silicon Valley surprise
With layoffs sweeping the technology sector and artificial intelligence reshaping hiring, one might expect tech hubs to have a weak showing in our graduate ranking.
That wasn’t the case. San Jose climbed to third, and San Francisco rose four places to seventh, both buoyed by solid hiring.
Elsewhere, the picture was different. Seattle ranked 38th, and the secondary tech hubs of Portland and San Diego fell near the bottom, dragged down by hiring rates in the bottom 25th percentile.
In Texas, the Austin-Round Rock region fell from fourth place as the pace of hiring slowed from 2.8 percent to 2.4 percent. Miami maintained its steady hiring, but stagnant wages and high costs kept it near the bottom on affordability, behind only San Franciso.
Phoenix rises—then falls
Last year, the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metro was one of our biggest upward movers. This year, the region was pulled down by flat wages and cooling hiring. One bright spot: affordability improved slightly relative to other metros, perhaps helped by a normalizing housing market.
What happened to Raleigh?
Raleigh slipped from the top spot to fifth this year, but it remains a strong contender for new graduates.
More broadly, the rankings continue to favor fast-growing Southern metros, including such Tampa, Tennessee’s Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Austin, and Charlotte.
The large coastal hubs consistently rank in the top half. New York-Newark-Jersey City has been in the top 10 for three years, and San Francisco consistently has had a strong showing. Despite affordability pressures, these cities remain the country’s biggest job hubs.
Then there are the underperformers. Salt Lake City has occupied the last place on our list for the past two years. And in cities such as Seattle and San Diego, high wages don’t translate to affordability or robust hiring.
Methodology
How we find likely college graduates in payroll data
Payroll data doesn’t capture the educational attainment of workers. To address this, we map job titles to the Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET) Job Zones, which classify occupations based on educational, experience, and training requirements. 1ADP uses a proprietary algorithm to map the job titles that employers enter into the payroll system to their most likely ONET-SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) codes, which ONET categories by Job Zone.
Occupations fall into one of five Job Zones, each with its own typical education requirements.
How we compare metro areas
We looked at 53 U.S. metro areas with populations of at least one million residents. For 2026, we excluded Cleveland, Ohio, and Virginia Beach, Va., from our sample due to data limitations: Cleveland’s sample size for the target workers was too small, while Virginia Beach showed unusually large swing in hiring driven by a small number of employers.
We rank metros based on three characteristics:
- Wages– For the 12 months ending in April 2025, we used ADP data to estimate median annualized wages each month for workers ages 20 to 29 in jobs requiring considerable preparation. We calculated the average of those medians by metro area.
- Hiring rates– Each month, we counted the number of people aged 20 to 29 who were hired in the previous 12 months into jobs requiring considerable preparation, typically a bachelor’s degree, and the number of people in that same group who were employed in those jobs during the same period. We divided hires by employment. The result captures the speed at which employers grew their considerably-prepared headcount aged 20 to 29 each month. We present the result as a percentage, which gives the rate per 100 people employed for a full month.
- Affordability– The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis divides a metro area’s consumer price index by the national cost index to measure metro-area regional price parity (MARPP). The higher the MARPP, the more expensive the metro relative to the national average 2Metro areas here are defined as Core-Based Statistical Areas. We report results for CBSAs with at least one million residents as of 2022 five-year American Community Survey total population estimates. To measure affordability, we take the inverse of MARPP3Affordability = 1/MARPP. To adjust wages for the cost of living, we divide the metro area’s wages by MARPP.
To make these metrics comparable, we assigned a percentile rank for wages, hiring, and affordability. Higher percentiles indicate stronger performance. For example, a metro with a hiring rate percentile ranking of 65 percent has better hiring than 65 percent of the metros studied.
We then combine affordability-adjusted wages and hiring into a single metric and rank metros based on that composite measure. 4Specifically, we take the geometric mean, which leads a 1 percent decline in affordability-adjusted wages to have the same impact on a metro area’s average score as a 1 percent decline in the hiring rate, despite their different scales.
