The short answer
Compare metros on occupational employment levels and concentration from OEWS, then adjust wages for local costs. Do not expect monthly openings or hires for one occupation in one metro, because JOLTS is national and industry based and no federal source publishes that combination.
What is genuinely available locally
OEWS publishes occupational employment and wage estimates for metro areas. That gives you three useful comparisons: how many people do this work there, how concentrated the occupation is relative to the metro's size, and what the local median wage is.
- Total employment: raw scale of the occupation in that metro.
- Jobs per thousand: how common the occupation is locally.
- Location quotient: concentration compared with the national average.
- Local median wage, where the estimate is published.
Scale versus concentration
Large metros dominate any raw employment ranking simply because they are large. Concentration measures answer a different and often more useful question: is this occupation unusually important to that local economy?
A high concentration metro tends to have more specialized employers, deeper professional networks, and more lateral moves available. A high raw employment metro offers more total roles but also more competition.
The honest limits
There is no published monthly openings series for one occupation in one metro. Metro level employment data from CES is industry based. Ranking cities as best places to work for an occupation requires assumptions about cost of living, competition and preference that public data does not settle.
That is why the metro chart on occupation pages is labeled as largest metro markets by employment rather than best markets. It reports what OEWS measured, nothing more.
A workable comparison method
Shortlist metros with meaningful employment in the occupation, then order them by concentration rather than size, then compare local median wage against local housing costs before deciding. Treat the national health score as the timing signal and the metro data as the placement signal.
What would improve this
Census ACS, County Business Patterns and Business Dynamics Statistics would add local cost, employer count and business churn context. None of them are ingested today, and nothing on this site currently uses them.
Takeaways
- Metro comparisons rest on OEWS employment, concentration and wages.
- Concentration often matters more than raw size for a career move.
- No federal source gives monthly openings for one occupation in one metro.
Sources behind this guide
- OEWSOccupational Employment and Wage Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- ACSAmerican Community Survey, U.S. Census Bureau.
- CBPCounty Business Patterns, U.S. Census Bureau.
Put it to use
Look up a specific job to see its Job Market Health score, trend, wage context and outlook. Search occupations, or read how the score is built on the methodology page.
Keep reading
- How to read occupational wage dataOEWS wages are estimates for people already employed in an occupation during a past reference period. Read the median, respect the percentile spread, and never treat it as an offer.
- Occupation vs industry job dataIndustry is who pays you. Occupation is what you do. The fastest data is by industry, the data that matches a job title is slower, and bridging them requires weighting.