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LinkedIn Names St. Louis Best in US for New Grads Looking to Launch Their Careers

  • May 28, 2020

St. Louis, Missouri, has been named the top city in the U.S. for new graduates looking to launch a career, according to experts at LinkedIn. The study highlighted St. Louis’ mix of strong starting salaries and affordable rent as key factors in helping this Missouri city clinch the top spot.

LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team identified St. Louis as Number 1 on a list of 15 metro areas ranked by the median salary for starter jobs and median monthly rent. To produce the analysis, LinkedIn found nearly 3 million occupations identified on LinkedIn by people between 2017 and 2019 who had recently reached their maximum education level. LinkedIn matched the median salary for those positions with median rental rates in U.S. metro areas using Zillow Rentals’ data for the same time period.

The cities are ranked by lowest rent-to-salary ratio with a threshold of at least 15,000 “starter” hires over the three-year span. St. Louis tops the list, with annual gross pay for the types of jobs commonly sought by recent grads reaching past $60,000. Rent averages around $11,900 per year, or just under $1,000 per month.

“That makes St. Louis a strikingly affordable city in which to start a career, with rent consuming just 19.7% of gross income,” said George Anders, a Senior Editor at LinkedIn.

Missouri’s St. Louis region has a history of ranking among the best cities in the U.S. It was named among the 10 best cities in the U.S. to move to, one of the best cities in the U.S. for women in tech, and best for jobs in recent months. These accolades, combined with the region’s outstanding quality of life and central location, make it no surprise that more and more world-class talent is beginning to call the region home.

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