Is the meat market more important than the labor market?
April 2, 2008 | 5:35 pm
It’s been awhile since I’ve talked with Richard Florida. At one point we were hanging out a lot at the Sharp Edge in Shadyside and working on a book proposal about Pittsburgh’s citycide, but then we both fled Pittsburgh and, as these things tend to go, we fell out of contact.
So it was good to get a fresh dose of his thinking in my local Sunday paper, as he analyzed the dating scene — and its economic import — in metro areas:
No one’s going to argue with the notion that where you live affects your employment prospects. But the place you call home has a lot to do with your chances of finding the right partner as well. Having an enticing “mating market” matters as much or more than a vibrant labor market.
His conclusion? East Coast cities generally have a surplus of women, which favors single men when it comes to dating. The dating field levels and starts to favor women as you move West:
He did have a rather interesting assessment of Boston dating, which has nearly a perfect balance of single men and single women:
Greater Boston is unusual among large metro areas…. having just 1,600 or so more women than men - 604,960 men to 606,580 women. And this may be part of the reason why the region ranks third for young singles on a ranking of more than 150 metro regions my team and I compiled. The entire region surrounding Boston and its immediate suburbs does well, too. Worcester; Portland, Maine; and Portsmouth-Manchester, N.H., also score among the top five for singles among small-medium-sized regions nationwide.
This high ranking is good news, because singles attract other singles. Numerous studies have found that young people pick where they want to live first and then search for a job in those places. When Forbes magazine asked young singles of both genders what matters most in the places they live, more said “number of other singles” than said “great career prospects”; things like “wild nightlife” and “low cost of living” came in much farther behind.
The number don’t lie, but try telling all of that to single people, wherever they may live.