San Diego's job market sucks

San Diego is among the five United States cities with the lowest number of job opportunities, according to WalletHub, a statistics-compiling organization that reports on cities and states.

San Diego is the best of the five worst, but that is not saying much. The other four cities are Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and, last, New York City. This study only measures cities, not metro areas, and the statistics and rankings are adjusted for the cities' size. The figure is calculated by subtracting the number of unemployed people from the number of job openings.

This particular study looks at a number of variables besides job openings. Among the variables are employment growth, monthly median starting salary, unemployment rate for high school graduates and those with bachelor's degrees or higher, and percentage of employed workforce living under the poverty line. By those metrics, San Diego is 106th among 150 cities; Oceanside is 56th and Chula Vista 84th.

There is another measurement by which San Diego comes out better: its socio-economic environment, which includes median annual income adjusted for cost of living, time spent working and commuting, benefits, housing affordability, safety, emotional health, and social life (such as number of cafés per capita). By these measures, San Diego comes in 37th of the 150 cities, raising its overall score to 79th of 150 — still not particularly impressive. Of all 150 cities, Oceanside has the lowest percentage of the employed workforce living under the poverty line.