Austin Number Three City for Starting a Career

Millennials, take note.

Austin, Texas was named the third best city in the nation for starting a career, based on an analyzation by WalletHub of a combination of professional opportunities and quality of life. Overall, Austin ranked number one for its quality of life and number 11 for its professional opportunities.

The study aimed to represent the factors “young people have in mind when looking for a place to set down roots.” And, WalletHub was cited in a Forbes article: “Not only do more employers plan to hire recent college grads in 2015, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, but hiring in general is also on the rise.”

WalletHub analyzed and ranked the 150 most populous U.S. cities to find the results, which included fellow Texas cities Irving and Grand Prairie for spots one and two, and Houston, Corpus Christi, and Fort Worth for the fifth, sixth, and eighth spots in the nation, respectively.

The study weighted professional opportunities at a scale of ten and quality of life at a scale of five. Professional opportunity factors included, among others, the number of entry-level jobs per 10k inhabitants, the monthly median starting salary (adjusted for cost of living,) and the annual job growth rate. Quality of life factors included, among others, the median annual income (adjusted for cost of living,) the number of arts, leisure, and recreation establishments per 100k inhabitants, the percentage of the population ages 25 to 34, and the percentage of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Read Wallet Hub’s 2015 Best and Worst Cities to Start a Career.