The job market is killing the marriage market, meaning that women want some stability (i.e. a job) in the men they end up with — and because of the economy and our godforsaken hiring practices, the percentage of men with those jobs is declining. So if you’re a single woman, what should you do? Well, apparently you should move west of the Mississippi. Here’s a chart of the metro areas with the highest rates of single, employed men to single young women. Seven of the 10 on the list are west of the Mississippi (Minneapolis-St. Paul is right on the Mississippi), with four of the areas being in California (San Jose, San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles). The only east coast areas are Pittsburgh (an emergent city), the DC area, and the Orlando area.
By contrast, the lowest ratios of single employed men to employed women of the single variety are mostly east coast, with two of the larger cities in Florida — Jacksonville and Miami — on that list.
All this data comes from this post at CityLab, and broadly lines up with some other information about where young, single people tend to be residing: see here, here, and here.
There’s an interactive map of all this at the Pew Research Center as well.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for that ring eventually, Florida and Cincinnati are not broadly the places to chase it. But then again, if that’s where all your friends are and you don’t want to relocate, put your head down and go to romantic work. It might be tougher — 56 single, employed men per 100 women in Cincy vs. 114 of those men in San Jose — but nothing about love and relationships is supposed to be easy.
