The Midwest seems to be a great place to move to after the novel coronavirus pandemic subsides, based on our recent analysis of US cities.
Business Insider created an overall ranking of the best cities to move to after the pandemic using different economic, educational, and employment metrics along with other measures that someone may factor in when deciding where to move next.
All nine of our metrics were standardized using z-scores so that we could then add the values together to get an overall index for each city.
For more information on our overall method and list of data sources, click here.
It is important to note that these figures are from before the pandemic, so it is likely some of these cities may have been more financially and economically impacted than others during this unprecedented time.
For instance, Springfield, Illinois, which ranked at the top of our list, had a pre-coronavirus unemployment rate close to the national average. However, in April, its unemployment rate had shot up to 15.3%, 0.6 percentage points above the national rate of 14.7%. Cities that also rely heavily on college spending and employment may also see big negative impacts from campus closures and uncertainty about the upcoming fall semester, based on reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
In our national ranking, cities in the Midwest region as defined by the US Census Bureau dominated the top of the list. Read on to see the best cities in the Midwest to move to after the pandemic.