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Comment by abledon | Hacker News Reader

The top 5 places all seem to be known for gorgeous nature scenery outside the cities.... This is inspiring to move there.

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I think the top 5 places are where it's hardest to get a job. So for every 1 job listing in San Jose there's 4 people looking for work. Granted I'd guess San Jose is a special case because if you don't have technical skills you're probably going to have a bad time trying to find a job around there.

I'm pretty sure it's the opposite: for every four job postings, there is one person looking for work. So, the climate is very good.

Why are you sure it's the opposite? From the site:

> Here's the number of unemployed per job posting for the 50 most populous metropolitan areas in the U.S.

The title is even "Job Competition" so it's likely the chart is listing the most competitive cities for jobs.

Because there are 4 empty chairs next to one person (and the legend says an empty chair is a job posting)

This is hilarious. None of that shows up on mobile so depending on what device you're viewing this on, your interpretation of the data is completely different.

Mobile: http://imgur.com/a/usQpB

Oh wow. I completely interpreted it the other way due to mobile as well. Poorly done on their part. Thanks for sharing.

It seems San Jose is the least competitive, with the blue chairs being job postings and the orange people being unemployed job seekers. Thus, four open chairs to one unemployed person, followed by 3 open chairs to one unemployed person.

The title and summary above the listing is rather confusing.

I think the chairs don't show up on mobile.

The climate isn't very good for the people in the indeed marketplace. I looked up the indeed in my home town (admittedly not SV) and the jobs were almost entirely below $30K/yr, in the service sector, very low paying receptionist, driver, retail, part time no benefits type of jobs.

True, someone needs to answer the phone and drive trucks in San Jose... just they can't afford to live there on receptionist or delivery driver pay. So there's job openings.

Its a "top 50 worst places to live for working poor" list calculated by finding where working poor cannot live or work anymore, so the jobs go unfilled.

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