Three Bay Area cities best for jobs in 2020

When it comes to finding a job, the same applies in the job-hunting market: It’s all about location.

When it comes to finding a job, the same mantra that applies to real estate can also be used for those in the job-hunting market: It’s all about location, location, location.

And some of the best locations in the country for finding a job remain in the Bay Area.

That’s the gist of a study from personal finance and information site WalletHub, which on Friday released a report on what are supposed to be the best cities in the United States for finding a job in 2020. According to WalletHub, San Francisco is the third-best city in the country for jobs searchers, Fremont comes in at No. 5 and San Jose took 15th place among the 182 cities in the study.

San Francisco trails only Scottsdale, Arizona and Burlington, Vermont on WalletHub’s list. Detroit came in 182nd place for best cities for jobs.

Other Bay Area and Northern California cities in the WalletHub rankings included Sacramento at No. 36, Oakland in 64th place and Santa Rosa at No. 73.

WalletHub said it based its rankings on two main areas: job market and socioeconomics. Job market factors included items such as job opportunities, employment growth, unemployment rate and access to employment benefits. Socioeconomic topics included median annual income, average work and commute time and affordability of housing.

WalletHub found that Fremont is the best city in the country when it comes to workers living below the poverty line, as only 1.84% of the city’s workforce qualifies as living in poverty. San Jose took the top spot for highest monthly average starting salary, with $6,019 a month. To put that number in some perspective, San Jose’s montly average starting salary is 3.2 times higher than that of Brownsville,

Texas, which came in last place with an average starting salary of $1,876 a month.

And while San Francisco ranked highly for factors such as monthly starting salaries and a low overall unemployment rate, the city came in 181st place for workers having the longest average commute and work times. San Francisco also ranked No. 179 in terms of least affordable housing, ahead of just Miami, Boston and New York.

The WalletHub study comes as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently said the national unemployment rate in December was 3.6%, and remains near the 50-year-low rate of 3.5% that was reported in September.