The 9 Worst Cities for College Graduates to Live

There are plen­ty of cities that prob­a­bly come to your mind when you think of post-grad­u­a­tion life. Boston, New York City, Wash­ing­ton D.C., Dal­las, San Fran­cis­co, Los Ange­les and plen­ty more cities prob­a­bly come up on your dream list of places to live after you walk across the stage at grad­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, some of those cities that were just list­ed are one of the worst places for col­lege grad­u­ates to live. So, con­tin­ue read­ing and find out which nine cities you should prob­a­bly avoid while job searching.

Cities with the least afford­able housing:

When you grad­u­ate col­lege, you prob­a­bly won’t have a high pay­ing job, at least not yet. On top of that, you have to fac­tor in loan pay­ments, car pay­ments, insur­ance and mon­ey for day-to-day liv­ing such as gro­ceries, elec­tric­i­ty, month­ly Net­flix pay­ments and more. So, you’re going to want to look at cities with afford­able hous­ing that won’t gob­ble up most of your pay­check. Here are three cities with the least afford­able hous­ing in the Unit­ed States.

Orange Coun­ty, Cal­i­for­nia. Do you remem­ber the show, “The OC?” The teen dra­ma set in the lav­ish town of Orange Coun­ty, Calif. that dom­i­nat­ed tween tele­vi­sion in the ear­ly 2000s? Well, if you were think­ing of liv­ing in the actu­al Orange Coun­ty, think again. The per­cent­age of your aver­age week­ly income required to pay for a medi­an-priced home is 80.9 per­cent. So, per­haps you should hold off on your dream of liv­ing like Mis­cha Bar­ton, unless you man­age to have about three or four room­mates to help pay for your nice, beach­front apartment.

Sono­ma, Cal­i­for­nia. If you love wine, this one is going to sting just a lit­tle bit. Sono­ma is most­ly known for its vast array of winer­ies and beau­ti­ful moun­tain scenery, but, as you guessed, it’s super pri­cy to live there. You would need to dole out 1 per­cent of your week­ly income to live in this scenic Cal­i­for­nia town. So, what exact­ly could you live in if you still chose to move to the wine coun­try? Well, a sim­ple search on Zillow.com shows that you can’t find an apart­ment to rent for less than $1,500 a month, and that’s only for a small, one bed­room apart­ment. You might as well just live on cam­pus for anoth­er year or stay in that over­priced on-cam­pus apart­ment you have now.

New York City, New York. It’s no shock that the bustling New York City would be make the list of least afford­able places to live. Not only is it expen­sive to live there, with 4 per­cent of your pay­check going towards hous­ing, but it’s also expen­sive to do just about any­thing in New York. Want to see a movie? That will cost you around $15. Grab a meal with your friends? That’ll cost you around $48, while the nation­al aver­age is around $40. Sure, you could prob­a­bly make it work depend­ing on how much you make at your first job, but you might end up get­ting stuck in a stu­dio apart­ment with about five oth­er people.

Cities with the slow­est job growth:

When you’re apply­ing for a job, you’re going to want to look at job growth because, well, you’re going to want to live some­where with actu­al jobs. A slow job growth rate means that the city isn’t pro­duc­ing new jobs at a high rate, so there’s less of a chance of you get­ting a job there. Here are the three cities with the slow­est job growth.

Shreve­port, Lou­sian­na. When most peo­ple think Louisiana, they most­ly just think of New Orleans and not Shreve­port. Well, that might be for a good rea­son. The third largest city in the state actu­al­ly has a neg­a­tive per­cent of job growth. It has ‑0.24 per­cent recent job growth, which means that’s its los­ing more jobs than its gain­ing. That’s a pret­ty scary thought for any senior about to grad­u­ate col­lege and look for jobs.

Lub­bock, Texas While Lub­bock is known as “Hub City” with its high ener­gy, col­le­giate crowd from two uni­ver­si­ties and numer­ous fes­ti­vals, it has a low job growth of 0.86 per­cent com­pared to the 1.59 per­cent nation­al aver­age. While this city would be fun for a recent grad­u­ate to live in, the low job growth rate doesn’t show that a col­lege grad­u­ate would have a lot of job oppor­tu­ni­ties here.

Augus­ta, Geor­gia. Oh, Augus­ta, home of the Mas­ters golf tour­na­ment every year, sun­shine all year round and enough Ralph Lau­ren polos to make any fra­ter­ni­ty broth­er eter­nal­ly hap­py rid­ing around in a golf cart with a Bud Light in hand. What’s the down­side you ask? Its job growth in 2016 alone was just 2.1 per­cent with an annu­al pro­ject­ed job growth of 1.1 per­cent. Yikes. That’s pret­ty low com­pared to River­side, Calif. with the fastest job growth rate of 3.40 per­cent. While Augus­ta is a beau­ti­ful town to vis­it, with such a low pro­ject­ed job growth rate, it def­i­nite­ly doesn’t seem like a boom­ing city that a recent col­lege grad­u­ate should live in.

Cities with the low­est aver­age salary:

This is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant cat­e­go­ry when you’re look­ing for a pos­si­ble new home post-grad­u­a­tion. Salary is what you live off of, so if you have a salary on the small­er size, that’s going to make pay­ing off stu­dent loans, pay­ing month­ly rent and pay­ing for fun activ­i­ties like con­certs and a night out at the local bar a lit­tle dif­fi­cult. So, here are three cities to steer clear of if you want a (semi) big paycheck.

San­ta Ana, Cal­i­for­nia. With its famous New­port Beach and Hunt­ing­ton Beach and a live­ly, young scene with numer­ous col­leges in the area, San­ta Ana would def­i­nite­ly pro­vide a lot of fun enter­tain­ment for a recent col­lege grad­u­ate. How­ev­er, with an aver­age salary of $49,184 and the aver­age apart­ment cost­ing $1,307 to rent a month, a mil­len­ni­al wouldn’t have much mon­ey left over to par­tic­i­pate in those fun activities.

Ana­heim, Cal­i­for­nia. While Ana­heim has the eighth largest econ­o­my in the U.S., thanks to Dis­ney­land bring­ing in almost 18 mil­lion peo­ple in 2016, it’s home to one of the low­est aver­age salaries in the nation. The city’s aver­age salary is $49,353, which might seem like a pret­ty large pay­check to col­lege grad­u­ates who have only earned min­i­mum wage for the last four years. How­ev­er, when you fac­tor in an aver­age apart­ment cost­ing a whop­ping $1,362 a month to rent, that salary isn’t going to go very far. So, while yes, it would be awe­some to live and work in the same city as Dis­ney­land, it isn’t worth it with that low of an aver­age salary and a high cost of living.

Irvine, Cal­i­for­nia. Are you sens­ing a pat­tern yet? Yes, the city with third low­est aver­age salary is, again, in Cal­i­for­nia. While the aver­age salary is much high­er than the pre­vi­ous two cities at $68,942, the cost of liv­ing is also high­er. A stu­dio bed­room, on aver­age, will cost you a heart stop­ping $1,350 a month, which is $638 more than the nation­al aver­age. And if you’re feel­ing a lit­tle extrav­a­gant, you could upgrade to a one-bed­room apart­ment, cost­ing you $1,641 a month. Do you even want to know what that is com­pared to the nation­al aver­age? Well, it’s $816 more a month. So, while you would get paid more mon­ey to work in Irvine, you would also have to spend a lot more mon­ey to just have a roof over your head.