00:00You guys have this great new index out, the inaugural Best Cities to Work 2026, and we
00:06couldn't help but notice where we are right now is not at the top of the list. Not even
00:11close to the top of the list. It's not. Where I live down in Charlotte is also not, and I
00:16love living there, so just because something isn't on the list doesn't mean it can't be
00:19a great place for individuals, but it did not make it to the top 25. Okay, before we
00:23get to where the best places are to work, what are the metrics that you use? It's not
00:29simple by any means. No, and I love that you picked up on that because I'm an
00:33economist, so we built it with workers in mind, but we used economic data both
00:39from Indeed and also from other public data sources. It's 40 different metrics
00:44across six pillars, and we rated 228 metros that had at least 200,000 people in
00:52them in terms of population, and so the pillars cover everything from job
00:56opportunity and compensation, which I think comes to mind right away when you
00:59think about a best place to work, but also things like job quality, work life
01:04and flexibility, economic opportunity, and career dynamism. Like is it easy to
01:08change jobs or change careers? So being a great city to work is actually pretty
01:13complicated, so the metric is pretty complicated itself, but we hope that it's
01:17very usable for lots of different groups of folks.
01:20Yeah, I mean, some of the cities on this list surprised me. I know we keep bringing
01:24up the New York City element, right? But I did see some of the smaller cities
01:28making the list. Burlington, number three, Madison, number six, also Rochester at seven.
01:33Are smaller cities actually becoming some of the better places when you think about
01:38building a career, perhaps?
01:41Yes, absolutely can be. I think that one of the things you'll notice is that there are
01:47very large metro areas on the list, and like you mentioned, there are some much smaller ones.
01:51Many of the smaller ones have high concentrations of what we call sometimes
01:55eds and meds. So a lot of them are towns with large universities, and like Rochester, Minnesota,
02:02that's where the Mayo Clinic is. And so these large institutions that are based in somewhat smaller
02:07metro areas, they bring in a lot of activity, right? They bring in a lot of other businesses that
02:11are created around them, lots of smart people that are bringing with them entrepreneurial spirit and
02:18those sorts of things. And so as we built this metric, Burlington, Vermont, which came in at
02:22number three, as I built the metric, they were up at the top pretty much the whole time.
02:27So I've never even visited Burlington, Vermont, but I want to go now.
02:30We were talking about this earlier.
02:31Oh, it's really nice. You guys got to go.
02:32You're saying it's great. I got to find my way over there.
02:35It's very, very nice. Yeah. Boston, Washington, D.C., Burlington, the top three. Interestingly
02:39enough, I was surprised to see a couple of Silicon Valley names in there. San Francisco is in there,
02:44and San Jose are both in there. Is that because these two round out the top five,
02:50is that because compensation in these areas right now matches that high cost of living?
02:58Yes. So what was surprising to me, I thought, as we worked on this, that once we adjusted for
03:04cost of living and taxes, because we adjusted for state and local taxes, that maybe some of those
03:08compensation gaps would close, but they did not for those two metro areas. They still come to the top,
03:16even after adjusting for cost of living, cost of housing and taxes, which is pretty amazing.
03:21How do you use Indeed hiring data in this process?
03:23Yeah, great question. Yeah. So one of the really exciting things about this is we came
03:27out with a brand new metric called the Indeed Labor Market Tightness Index. That's actually
03:31the most heavily weighted metric in the entire index. And this basically looks at how easy or hard
03:38it is to get a job. So we have data in there from Indeed on how many job postings there
03:43are.
03:43We have data on wages. We have kind of our standard hiring lab data that we usually collect. But we
03:49also wanted to know, okay, given the number of postings, how hard are people in these metro areas
03:53having to search? So we can look at the number of searches, the number of clicks, the number of
03:57applies to see how hard people are having to search. And we also can look at employer behavior to see
04:02how
04:02hard employers are having to search for workers. And so that was a new metric for us, but it's one
04:09we'll
04:09start rolling out, I think, on a monthly basis because it's really telling. Because there are
04:13some metros where the labor market's really slack because labor demand has fallen. But there are
04:18other places where it's hard to find a job, but it's more because there's a mismatch between the
04:22jobs that are available and maybe the skills that people have locally.
04:26Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna talk about a personal connection. I see Charlottesville,
04:30Virginia on here ranked number one for job quality and security. I went to the University of Virginia.
04:34Yeah. Is this an area that's also essentially underpinned by the fact that you have the
04:38University of Virginia Medical Center? Yeah, this is one of these eds and meds towns,
04:43right? So you've got a place that's a relatively small, not a tiny metro area, but relatively small.
04:49But just think about your time in Charlottesville and the amount of talent, human capital and physical
04:55capital that is there, not only because of the University of Virginia, but there's also a medical
05:00school there and you have a large medical system. And those types of institutions do bring with them
05:05great job quality and great job security. You probably were taught by a lot of professors at
05:10UVA that have been there a long time. Yeah.
05:12It's a great place to be, right? So I actually grew up in Athens, Georgia, which is another college
05:17town that didn't make it to the top. But when I saw those college towns end up where they did,
05:23I wasn't surprised just given what my life experience having lived in a town like that.
05:28Well, speaking of college towns, Boulder, Colorado is on here. And that is another one that surprises
05:32me because it's a high cost of living and it has a reputation for people moving there after they've
05:36made a lot of money and can kind of cruise and essentially retire young. What is the economic
05:43job opportunity? Right. So Boulder is very close to Denver. So you certainly could live in Boulder
05:49and work in Denver. So that might be part of some of that economic opportunity and people moving
05:54there. But it ranks number one in the country for best work life and flexibility.
05:59Yeah. I have a friend there who does more life than work, if that makes sense.
06:03I do too. I do too. But it fits, I think. And so, but I think it, you know, it
06:08goes to show that
06:10different places do have different strengths and weaknesses. And one of the things I would say is
06:14that the cities that rose to the very top were places that had relative strength across the board.
06:20A lot of the places like Indeed or Charlotte that didn't make it to the top, but also weren't
06:24anywhere near the bottom had strength in some areas, but weakness.
06:27And just before we let you go, you also have a few kids who are working age. Do they change
06:34their
06:36strategy based on this list?
06:37So while I was building this, my oldest son was looking for a job and I was literally saying,
06:41like, have you looked for jobs in Burlington, Vermont? It's number one for job opportunity.
06:45What's going on there? But also I will say he ended up getting a full-time job that's remote.
06:49And if you have a remote job, you might want to look, you can sort our metric by different pillars
06:54that work-life and flexibility or some of the other metrics might mean a lot.
06:57Okay. It means he starts paying rent if he stays at home.
06:59Exactly right. I guess that's what it means.
07:01He's going, he's going.
07:01Okay.
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