Philadelphia Named Best City for Millennials

The City of Brotherly Love is a great place for millennials to live, work, and play. Such were the findings of a Forbes survey that was published recently.

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Philadelphia got kudos on the basis of its relative affordability when compared with other metro areas like New York and Boston. It also boasts a below-average unemployment rate (20 basis points lower than the national average) and an ample supply of affordable housing.

Forbes found, based on surveys of people born between 1982 and 1998, that a thriving job market was a highly desirable factor in weighing out where to live. The surveys were conducted by Adobo, an apartment-search website run by millennials.

In an interesting turn of events, however, fewer than one percent of survey respondents named Philadelphia their ideal city in which to live, despite the host of attractive factors it has going for it. The star of those surveys is always New York. One factor that might be affecting that fact, says Center City District President and CEO Paul R. Levy for the Philadelphia Business Journal, is the number of jobs available in each respective city. He points out that over forty percent of the population of Greater Center City is millennial, and that the area has done a “great job” attracting young adults. It’s simply a fact, however, that New York has more jobs.

Center City isn’t the only neighborhood in Philadelphia that’s seen an increase in the number of millennial occupants. “There has been a major expansion of high-rise office buildings and higher-end residential areas beyond Center City in areas like Fishtown and the Naval Yard,” the Journal says. Rents are rising, but so are wages. It’s a great, dynamic time to be a young adult in Philadelphia. It’s reasonably affordable and the quality of life is decidedly above-average.