Personal Finance

A great job sometimes means a relocation

Key Points
  • Younger workers, men and those with more years of education are likelier to relocate for a new job, Glassdoor research says.
  • Better company culture is a bigger lure than a $10,000 bump in pay.
silvana magnaghi | Moment | Getty Images

If you’re job hunting, a move may be in your future.

Just over a quarter of job applications are sent to new metro areas from where the person is currently living, says a survey from Glassdoor, the companies rating website.

The big draws are salary, opportunity and company culture, which Glassdoor assesses based on its own ratings. Eleven years in, the website has more than 40 million reviews and comments for about 770,000 companies.

As you’d expect, salary sometimes motivates people to move — but not as often as you’d think. A $10,000 increase in salary makes candidates only a fraction more likely to move, Glassdoor says.

Better company culture beats money as a reason to switch cities, according to the company's research division.

Younger workers tend to be more inclined to move. Perhaps not surprisingly, as job applicants grow older, they become less ready to pull up stakes.

Men also are more likely than women to change cities for a new job. Given similar job titles, education and age, men have a somewhat higher average than women in applying for jobs in different cities.

The more education, the higher probability a job hunter has of moving. Job seekers with a master’s degree are more inclined to consider moving; those with associates’ degrees are the least likely to move to a new city for work, according to the survey.

Despite a high cost of living and housing shortages, San Francisco remains a desirable destination for job seekers.

San Francisco’s top 10 companies with the highest number of job applications from out-of-towners is a star-studded list of household names and new tech.

New York City follows closely, and its list of top companies contains just two financial services providers.

San Jose, California, is the third-most desired destination with hot companies including Google, Apple and Amazon.

Glassdoor used more than 668,000 online job applications during a typical week on the site to track trends in work-related moves among the country’s 40 largest metro areas.

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