Boston. Image via Jan Mark Holzer, CC BY 2.0.
We already know our city is top-tier, but we now have the data to prove it. Tuesday, U.S. News and World Report released its 2017 rankings for the Best Places to Live in America, and Boston landed on the list. With great schools and moderately low crime rates, Boston took a respectable eighth place, coming in behind trendy metro areas like Austin and Denver.
So what earned us the #8 slot? Here's the good (and the bad) that made Boston worthy of this ranking, according to U.S. News:
- Commuting here isn't ideal. According to U.S. News, the average commute time in Boston is 30.2 minutes - 4.3 minutes more than the national average. That might not seem like much, but that time does add up. Over the past year, we wasted 2.2 days of our lives going to and from work, and we're never going to get that back.
- There isn't much bang for your buck. We received a 5.8 score out of 10 for the “Value Index.” What does that mean? Our city offers a lower value than like-sized metro areas, when comparing average housing costs to median household income.
- Speaking of median housing costs, the average price for a home in Boston last year was about $321,000. For the rest of the country, that number hovered around $212,000.
- On top of that, our living essentials, like medical expenses and groceries, cost between 15 to 28 percent higher than the national average.
- But hey, we're paid more than most of the country. Our average annual salary is $62,070. That’s notably higher than the $48,320 the rest of the U.S. makes on average.
- And our employment prospects are better. Our unemployment rate is 3.5 percent - 1.4 percent lower than the national average. Our most popular fields for employment are scientific and technical services, finance and insurance, and healthcare and social assistance.
- We've got young blood. Our city's median age is 38.7, with nearly a quarter of our population aged 18 to 34.
- Not mentioned by U.S. News, but it's hard to ignore this value-add given the Super Bowl we just had: Our sports teams are spectacular.
