Top 10 Most Successful Cities by the Numbers

The most successful cities in the United States have higher median household incomes, lower poverty levels and low unemployment rates.

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Zippia.com looked at poverty level, median household income and unemployment data from the 2010-2014 American Community Survey to determine the most successful cities. The company has developed a data-engineering platform to help people make job and career decisions.

Like Gov1 data studies, this Zippia study uses median household income because it “is the most digestible way to understand how wealthy a place really is.” For rating the Top 10 Most Successful Cities, Zippia researchers also looked to unemployment rates to understand each place’s level of opportunities for people to earn money. And the poverty level--the percentage of people most likely struggling to get by.

The study calculated its “Success Scores” for the 289 places with populations of more than 100,000 people. Topping the most successful cities in America list is Frisco, Texas.

The Dallas suburb of more than 130,000 residents, has both the lowest poverty rate and the highest median income--$112,155--in the entire country. The unemployment rate is 4.9 percent.

In addition, while the median property value is lower in Dallas by about $120,000, the largest share of property values for owner-occupied housing units falls within the $200,000-$250,000 range compared to the $300,000-$400,000 range the bulk of Dallas homeowners fall into. That means these Friscoans--not to be confused with those in California--are earning a good living and enjoying more affordable housing opportunities.

The rest of the communities on the list below--cities with generally higher incomes and lower poverty levels--have some interesting accolades you can read about on the Zippia.com website.

  1. Frisco, Texas
  2. Cary, N.C.
  3. Naperville, Ill.
  4. Centennial, Colo.
  5. McKinney, Texas
  6. Alexandria, Va.
  7. Overland Park, Kan.
  8. Plano, Texas
  9. Gilbert, Ariz.
  10. Olathe, Kan.

Andrea Fox is Editor of Gov1.com and Senior Editor at Lexipol. She is based in Massachusetts.

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