AfterCollege found the top metro areas for electrical engineers to begin their careers. We looked at entry-level jobs on the AfterCollege network as well as jobs from 75+ newspapers to find cities with the most employers. JustJobs, a top job aggregator and job search engine, provided us with a comprehensive database of jobs from across the country. Salary.com, a leading source of salary data provided us with information on average entry-level salaries in our top cities. Apartments.com, one of the leading apartment guides and relocation resources, provided us with average rent prices for our target cities for studios and one-bedroom apartments. We also looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics for unemployment data for each area. The result is a guide that we hope will ease the job search process for recent graduates looking to begin their careers in electrical engineering.

Top Cities for Graduating Electrical Engineers

1. Washington, DC Area
2. Atlanta, GA
3. San Francisco Bay Area
4. New York, NY
5. Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
6. Boston, MA
7. Philadelphia, PA
8. Chicago, IL
9. Los Angeles, CA
10. Seattle, WA

Other cities that came close and deserve honorable mention include San Diego, Baltimore, and Minneapolis.

Methodology: We started with the cities that had the most employers with at least one entry-level job in electrical engineering. Job data was obtained from employers posting on AfterCollege, on AfterCollege-powered career networks at academic departments and groups and via our network of 75+ newspaper partners. We also looked at jobs posted on JustJobs, which aggregates data from over 80 different job boards. We then organized these cities into metro areas as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. We assigned this ranking a weight of 40% in our overall rank. We then looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics for unemployment data on each metro area and assigned this a weight of 20% in our rankings. We also looked at salary data for entry-level electrical engineers from Salary.com and gave this data a weight of 20%. Finally, we took average monthly rental rates, for the first half of 2009 for a one-bedroom apartment for each of the metro areas, courtesy of Apartments.com and assigned this data point a weight of 20%. We combined all these measures to create a composite rank that provided us with our final list.

The Washington D.C. area topped our list with the most employers of electrical engineers and one of the lowest unemployment rates. This was not surprising given the number of government initiatives currently on the way, which are not as affected by the economy as are initiatives in other sectors. The San Francisco Bay Area, which includes Silicon Valley, ranked high but not as high as we thought. The area had the fourth highest unemployment rate on our list. This shows how serious of an effect the recession is having on what is often referred to as the land of opportunity.