10 Cities With the Most Job Postings Per Capita

UNITED STATED. Among the 50 largest cities in the U.S., one stands out for having the most abundant job postings per capita: Washington, D.C. The nation's capital boasted 133 postings per 1,000 residents in the second quarter of 2009, according to a report by Indeed.com, a broad job search engine that combs company and association websites, job boards, newspapers, and blogs for postings. That Washington took the top spot is no great surprise, as government hiring has held up during the recession.

The runner up is Baltimore, Md., which is aided by its close proximity to Washington, but also boasts an economy fueled by recession-hearty industries like healthcare and higher education. Baltimore's unemployment rate was 7.2 percent in May, well below the 9.4 percent national average that month.

San Jose ranked no. 3 for job postings per capita in the second quarter, despite a regionally high unemployment rate in May, and continued fallout from the housing collapse. Still, the tech industry is resilient, and Alan Berube, co-author of a recent Brookings report on metro area economies, has said the Bay Area economy may recover more quickly than the rest of the nation. The metropolitan San Jose economy has remained one of the strongest through the recession, according to the Brookings report.

Here's the top 10 list--pulled from Indeed's list of 50 largest metro areas ranked according to job postings per capita in the second quarter of this year (last quarter's ranking is in parentheses):

1. (1) Washington, D.C.

2. (2) Baltimore

3. (3) San Jose, Calif.

4. (7) Austin

5. (6) Hartford, Conn.

6. (9) Seattle, Wash.

7. (8) Salt Lake City

8. (11) Denver

9. (5) Boston

10. (4) Las Vegas (Note: Charlotte, N.C. shared the same number of postings per capita as Las Vegas)

The city capturing the bottom spot on Indeed's list is Detroit. See the full list of 50 here.

One thing to keep in mind about this list is commuter populations--some metro areas may have high volumes of job openings per capita in part because their resident population is small compared to the total workforce employers draw from. In other words--lots of commuters. According to Census Bureau data on "daytime populations," based on the 2000 census, Washington and Salt Lake City's expanded the most by percentage on the list. Hartford, Seattle and Boston also rank high for commuters. However, this doesn't seem to skew the data too much: Portland, San Francisco, Charlotte, Houston, Atlanta, Tampa, Pittsburgh and Nashville had among the highest percent changes in daytime populations.