This Small Iowa City Has The Lowest Jobless Rate In America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 5, 6:49AM EST

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This Small Iowa City Has The Lowest Jobless Rate In America — © dustin77a / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Released its METROPOLITAN AREA EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT — OCTOBER 2020, the latest month available. The U.S. jobless rate for the month was 6.9%, not seasonally adjusted. Of America’s 389 metropolitan areas, the jobless rate was up in 384 compared to October 2019. Of these of 124 metropolitan areas had unemployment rates of less than 5% percent and 16 had rates of 10% or more.

Only one metro area had an unemployment rate of under 2%. It was 1.9% in Ames, Iowa.

Aimes ranks 323rd based on population among America’s city at 123,351. It is sparsely populated. Covering 1,141 square miles, its population density is only 108 people per square mile. The median age in Ames is 30 years old. Over 85% of the population is White, much above the national average.

The median household income in Ames is $62,181, which is below the national average of $68,400. The poverty rate at 15.6% is about 25% above the average for the United States.

The median value of a home in Ames is $185,800, about three-quarters of the median for the U.S.

Nearly 97% of the people in Ames have an education at the level of high school graduate or higher. That is 10 points higher than the national average. Almost 45% have a bachelor’s degree or higher. That is 1.4 times the national average.

Ames has a massive student population. Iowa State University has 36,000 students.

Ames, the primary city in the MSA, operates under a Mayor-Council form of government with a City Manager.

Ames is located in the center of Iowa, north of Des Moines.

The BLS report about metro populations shows how wide the spread of unemployment is among cities, and how low the figure is in Ames:

Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, HI, had the highest unemployment rate in October,22.5 percent, followed by El Centro, CA, 18.8 percent. Ames, IA, and Burlington-South Burlington, VT, had the lowest unemployment rates, 1.9 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively.

Ames is an outlier in terms of jobless rate if there ever was one.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.