A few years ago, RiseSmart, an outplacement company, found a correlation between lower unemployment rates and Super Bowl victories.

They analyzed unemployment rates for the metro areas whose teams played in the past 20 games and found that the team with the lower unemployment rate won 80% of the time. A spokesman for RiseSmart thinks that a metro area's economic status may affect their citizens' morale and local team support.

Based on their findings, it's going to be a close game. According to the latest report on Unemployment Rates for Large Metro Areas by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Seattle had a lower unemployment rate than Denver by 1 point, 5.7% vs 5.8%.

We could probably use a little more than a .1% unemployment rate difference to anticipate who the winner of the game might be. If unemployment rates show a correlation to Super Bowl winners, can hiring trends also reveal who might prevail? Going by hiring demand, we might be able to determine that Seattle would win. As of January there were 26,000 more job ads posted in the Seattle metropolitan area (123,000) than in the Denver metro (93,700), according to WANTED Analytics. Which jobs put Seattle in the lead? Are they ahead because there is more tech hiring in this area? In fact, there were more IT job ads posted in Seattle, about 15,000 more. Seattle also surpassed Denver demand in other occupational fields that had the most job ads posted online. Sales was the only area where Denver comes close to Seattle's demand.

Most In-Demand Jobs in Seattle and Denver

Can these hiring trends help us determine who will win the game? We'll find out this Sunday. Based on hiring trends, I'm picking Seattle.

Are you recruiting for jobs in these two cities? In addition to providing hiring demand data, WANTED Analytics can also reveal how hard-to-fill jobs are likely to be in these metros.