In the Wall Street Journal's 2022 ranking of America's hottest job markets, Kansas City came in No. 8 among metros with at least 1 million people, racing ahead of many bigger cities.
The rankings are based on five attributes: job growth, unemployment rate, share of adults working or looking for work, change in the size of the labor force, and change in average weekly wages. Cities were scored by the highest average ranking among the five categories based on Moody’s Analytics analysis of Labor Department data.
| METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREA |
OVERALL RANK |
UNEMPLOYMENT RATE RANK |
LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RANK |
PAYROLL CHANGE RANK |
CHANGE IN LABOR FORCE SIZE RANK |
CHANGE IN AVERAGE WEEKLY WAGES RANK |
| Austin-Round Rock, TX |
1 |
17 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
4 |
| Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN |
2 |
8 |
4 |
11 |
14 |
10 |
| Raleigh, NC |
3 |
9 |
16 |
4 |
4 |
16 |
| Salt Lake City, UT |
4 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
24 |
24 |
| Jacksonville, FL |
5 |
10 |
19 |
15 |
1 |
19 |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA |
6 |
7 |
20 |
20 |
9 |
21 |
| Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO |
7 |
38 |
3 |
16 |
6 |
18 |
| Kansas City, MO-KS |
8 |
11 |
5 |
19 |
7 |
43 |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH |
9 |
26 |
9 |
12 |
17 |
22 |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL |
10 |
13 |
45 |
9 |
2 |
23 |
Read more from the Wall Street Journal.