Hartford area ranks in top 10 best cities for recent college graduates

Hartford ranks among the top 10 cities for recent college graduates to live in, based on research gathered by the website HeyTutor.

The company analyzed data from the American Community Survey, County Business Patterns, and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis to determine the nation’s best cities for young adults. The ranking looks at the greater Hartford area.

Heytutor is an online marketplace that serves tutors and students.

Among cities across the country, Hartford came in at ninth place. Here’s why:

Hartford has good salaries for recent grads

The city’s median income for recent graduates is a healthy $48,056. The median income is the highest for any large American metropolitan area for recent graduates — more than $10,000 above the national median.

Financial service jobs are plentiful

The Hartford area has lots of financial services and aerospace industry jobs for new graduates.

The best locations are generally not on either coast, according to Heytutor. The top 10 locations offer competitive wages, lower living costs, employment opportunities, and plenty of fun for residents outside of the office.

The cost of living is competitive

In the Hartford area, the median rent is $1,061 and the median home value is $247,900 — higher than in cities with better rankings but still competitive with larger cities.

Popular cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C. did not make the top 10 ranking because of the high cost of living.

A lively arts and entertainment scene

The ranking gave high marks to Hartford’s arts and entertainment scene and the many things to do in the region.

Why does this matter?

There are lots of new graduates. Essentially, the study is looking into the uptick in young adults earning a bachelor’s degree or higher. In the past 15 years the rate of adults with graduate degrees has risen from 36.5 percent to 45.7 percent, according to to National Center for Educational Statistic’s findings.

From 2016 to 2017 over 1.9 million bachelor’s degrees were awarded, which is an increase of 57 percent compared to the degrees awarded from 2000 to 2001, the study shows.

In addition to the increase in degrees, young adults leaving college and entering the workforce now are facing the largest period of economic advancement in the nation’s history, according to HeyTutor.

How did they choose these cities?

The cities were ranked based on median rent, income, home value, rate of unemployment, cost of living, the portion of the population that are recent college graduates and arts and entertainment businesses available per 1,000 graduates.

For the unemployment rate, median income, cost of living and rent, the goal was for these number to be lower for the city to score higher. In the other categories, the higher the better for the city’s rating.

To minimize the results, the study only considered metropolitan areas with 1 million or more residents, according to the website.

As the study was geared toward recent college graduates and their ideal living situations, HeyTutor defined recent college grads as, “residents ages 22 to 27 with a bachelor’s degree or higher, not currently in school.”

That all sounds great. Then why wasn’t Hartford ranked first?

The highest-ranked metropolitan area for recent college grads to live is the Indianapolis, Indiana area, according to the study.

With an average cost of living 7.2 percent below average and an unemployment rate of 0.8 percent, the Indianapolis area offers plenty of employment with a significantly lower cost of living than other metropolises.

Along with the low cost of living and low median rent of $886, Indianapolis has a myriad of job opportunities in technology, manufacturing, sports and agribusiness, according to the study.

Abigail Brone can be reached at abrone@courant.com.