Best 10 cities for recent college graduates

Finding a job after college is imperative for many college seniors and some cities offer more career opportunities than others. As we approach graduation season, NerdWallet crunched the numbers to find the best cities in the US for recent college graduates. Can you guess which city came out on top? 

1. Washington

Evan Vucci/AP/File
This Oct. 15, 2013, photo, shows a view of the U.S. Capitol building at dusk in Washington.

Population between 20-29: 21.3 percent

Population 25 or older with a Bachelor's degree: 23 percent

Median earnings for Bachelor's degree holders: $60,104

Cost of living index: 140.1

Workers with management, business, science or arts jobs: 59.9 percent

 Unemployment rate: 5.1 percent

Overall score: 76.03

Of the 50 largest cities in the U.S., Washington, D.C. has the greatest percentage of residents working in management, business, science or arts. The cost of living in the nation’s capital is higher than in most other places, but the high median earnings for college grads and relatively low unemployment rate are reasons why D.C. continues to be a popular destination for those fresh out of college. The high number of government opportunities also ensures that the job market in Washington, D.C. is relatively more immune to economic recessions than in other parts of the country.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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