Forbes’ Flub: 7 Cities No Longer Best For Young Professionals

TAMPA, FL — Cigar City is no longer considered one of the Top 25 metro areas for young professionals to pick up sticks and move to in 2017. Thanks to a data error, Tampa is joined by six others, including Anaheim, California; Charleston, South Carolina; and St. Louis, in getting the boot from Forbes’ Best Cities For Young Professionals 2017 rankings.

“Yesterday, we were made aware of an inaccuracy in our story,” Forbes wrote in an email sent to Patch. “We found that due to an error importing data, the initial version of this list was incorrect and some of the statistics cited regarding individual metro areas were incorrect.”

As a result of the uploading error, these metro areas were summarily removed from the ranking:

• Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, Michigan
• Jacksonville, Florida
• Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas
• Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine, California
• Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida
• St. Louis, Missouri
• Charleston-North Charleston, South Carolina

Those seven areas’ loss represents a gain to these metro areas now included in the top 25 ranking:

• Dallas-Plano-Irving, Texas
• Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C., Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia
• Cambridge-Newtown-Framingham, Massachusetts
• Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tennessee
• Grand Rapids-Wyoming, Michigan
• Albany-Schenectady-Troy, New York
• Portland-Vancouver-Hillsborough

Some cities that retained their rankings after the data glitch was discovered saw their berths change, as well. For example, the old ranking had Salt Lake City in the No. 1 position. That honor now goes to the Seattle metro area.

In compiling the list, Forbes used six metrics, of which the median salary earned by college grads with less than five years of experience was the best predictor for whether a city would make the list. Another metric, rental affordability, was the least likely to predict whether a city would make the list.

The other metrics Forbes used are local unemployment rates, data on job growth and projections, networking opportunities and social outlook. Forbes ranked each of the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States using these metrics. Read more here on the metrics Forbes used to come up with the list.

The revised Top 25 list is as follows:

1. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Washington

2. Austin-Round Rock, Texas

3. Salt Lake City, Utah

4. San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco, California

5. Dallas-Plano-Irving, Texas

6. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colorado

7. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, District of Columbia, Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia

8. Boston, Massachusetts

9. Columbus, Ohio

10. Raleigh, North Carolina

11. Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, Indiana

12. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California

13. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota, Wisconsin

14. Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, Massachusetts

15. Oakland-Hayward-Berkeley, California

16. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Arizona

17. Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, Tennessee

18. Grand Rapids-Wyoming, Michigan

19. Omaha-Council Bluffs, Nebraska, Iowa

20. Boise City, Idaho

21. Tie – Atlanta-Sandy-Springs-Roswell, Georgia, and Albany-Schenectady-Troy, New York

23. Tie – Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon-Washington, and San Diego-Carlsbad, California

25. Silver Spring-Frederick-Rockville, Maryland

>>>Click here to see more statistics on the cities that made the list, including median income, unemployment rate and more.

Patch's Feroze Dhanoa contributed to this story.

Photo from the City of Tampa's Facebook page