Talent Attraction Scorecard 2025: Full Rankings

How We Measure Talent Attraction

Lightcast measured talent attraction across all 50 states and more than 900 Census-designated metropolitan and micropolitan areas. Regions are broken down by population size:

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  Large: 250,000 or more people (192 areas) 
  

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  Mid-Sized: 100,000 - 250,000 people (200 areas)
  

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  Small: 50,000 - 100,000 people (209 areas)
  

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  Very Small: 10,000 - 50,000 people (319 areas)
  

The Talent Attraction Scorecard has seven components that are given an equal weight: 

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  Overall Job Growth
  Overall job growth is the 2019-2024 percent job change for all wage-and-salary employees. Lightcast jobs data is derived from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Lightcast performs sophisticated “unsupression” techniques to calculate occupation-level job estimates each year at the metropolitan and micropolitan level.
  
  

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  High-Earning Job Growth
  High-earning jobs are those in the top 200 occupations by average earnings, nationally. This component measures the 2019-2024 growth in these jobs.
  
  

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  Blue-Collar Job Growth
  Blue collar jobs include the skilled trades, jobs in installation, manufacturing, and production, and protective service occupations. This component measures the 2019-2024 growth in these jobs. Job change estimates are derived from the same process described above, beginning with data from the BLS and BEA.
  
  

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  Competitive Effect
  Competitive effect explains how much of job change is due to a region’s unique competitive advantages, rather than overall national trends or industry-specific trends. It can be understood as growth above or below expectation.
  
  

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  College-Educated Population Growth
  Lightcast uses Census data to estimate the size and share of the population with an associate’s degree or more. In order to calculate this metric, Lightcast creates a composite growth score that combines both the percent growth in the number of people with this level of education and the percentage point growth in the share of the population with this level of education.
  
  

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  Attraction of Earners
  Earners are those with incomes at or above $25,000 annually. This score is calculated based on the number of earners per capita who moved to the region within the previous year, on average, between 2018–2023.
  

  
  

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  Prime-Age Population Growth
  This score is calculated based on the number of people aged 25–54 per capita who moved to the region within the previous year, on average, between 2018–2023.
  

To better understand how we calculated overall rankings based on the Z-Score for each metric, click here. And to explore the six key takeaways we derived from the data, go here.

This year's Talent Attraction Scorecard marks a shift from county-level rankings to metro-level rankings, reflecting a deliberate effort to capture talent dynamics across full labor markets where people live and work. We have also updated our processes to better investigate the reasons and dynamics behind talent attraction in 2025.