Top Canadian Cities for Young Professionals to Work and Live Revealed by Next Generation Consulting
Rankings Include 27 Best Cities in Canada for Next Gen Workers
MADISON, Wis., July 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Next Generation Consulting (NGC) announced its "Next Cities" rankings, listing the best places to live and work in Canada for young professionals. NGC tabulated the rankings after collecting and analyzing 45 measures for all Canadian cities with populations of more than 100,000 people.
NGC has studied the residential and relocation patterns of 20-40 year olds since 1998, and has developed a one-of-a-kind indexing system that evaluates a city based on the assets that are important to next gen workers. According to NGC, the seven indexes of a "Next City" are: Earning, Learning, Vitality, Around Town, After Hours, Cost of Lifestyle, and Social Capital. The rankings announced today are based on a city's total score in all seven indexes.
"Simply being the cheapest place to live, or the city with the most jobs is not a long-term workforce strategy," says NGC's founder, Rebecca Ryan. Although jobs are important, Ryan says, "The next generation is very savvy about choosing where they'll live. They look carefully at quality of life factors like how much time they're going to spend in traffic commuting, if they can live near a park or hike-and-bike trail, and whether a city's downtown stays awake after five." The Next Cities list ranks cities that are - or have the capacity to be - great places to live and work for the next generation, because they have the best overall score in the seven indexes the next gen values.
Noted economist Richard Florida underscores the large economic dividend paid to cities and regions that are talent magnets, noting in the April 2009 issue of The Atlantic that "The world's 40 largest mega-regions, which are home to some 18% of the world's population, produce two-thirds of global economic output and nearly nine in ten new patented innovations."
A 2006 study by the Urban Futures Institute showed that in 2022, if every single Canadian from age 15 to age 99 was working, there would still be a shortage of 3.9 million workers. To that point, NGC's Rebecca Ryan concluded, "This is something every city and business leader in Canada needs to be thinking about. Attracting and retaining talent is incredibly important, because the demographic challenges simply aren't going to go away."
NGC has been studying the city and workplace preferences of the next generation since 1998. NGC has assisted with the workforce development efforts of dozens of cities and states including: Halifax, Nova Scotia; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Akron, OH; Canton, OH; Columbus, OH; the State of Iowa; the State of Vermont; Charlotte, NC; Nashville, TN; Brevard County, FL; Region of Louisville, KY; Johnstown, PA; Central Texas (Belton, Copperas Cove, Killeen and Temple, TX); and Wichita, KS.
