Hiring Trends for Forbes' Best Cities for College Grads

Now that it's mid-April, many soon-to-be graduating college seniors are feeling the pressure to find a job. Forbes recently released their list of the 10 best cities for college grads. Their list uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, and Rent.com to determine the best places for new college grads to be looking for work in 2013. We wanted to know what hiring trends looked like in these 10 cities.

The 10 cities on Forbes' list are:

Atlanta, GA
Boston, MA
Houston, TX
Denver, CO
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
Seattle, WA
Dallas, TX
Raleigh, NC
Washington, DC
St. Louis, MO

In total, these 10 cities had more than 1.2 million job ads available online during March, representing a combined 5% year-over-year increase. Of these above, the metro area with the most job ads in March was Washington, DC. Here, there were more than 236,000 ads during March. Despite consistently having the most job postings each month, the DC metro area was 1 of 3 listed above that saw year-over-year declines in hiring demand. Job postings in DC were down about 0.7% compared to March of 2012, Minneapolis is declined 4.2%, and St. Louis saw the largest drop with 12% fewer jobs this March than last year. In comparison, Houston experienced the largest year-over-year increase. In this area, there were approximately 135,000 ads available online in March, up 16% from last year.

Hiring Demand in the 10 Best Cities for College Grads 2013

Below are the 10 occupations that were most commonly advertised in these 10 cities during March 2013. Registered Nurses appeared as the most in-demand job. This isn't too surprising since Nurses usually see the most job ads on a national level, as well. Nurses also experienced a 25% year-over-year increase, second only to First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation/Serving Workers. Other jobs that saw growth from March of last year were Software Developers, Retail Salespersons, First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers, Marketing Managers, and Customer Service Representatives. However, it is interesting that the only 3 of the below 10 occupations to see declining demand were technology related. Web Developers, Network and Computer Systems Administrators, and Computer Systems Analysts all saw declines.

10 In-Demand Occupations in the 10 Best Cities for College Grads