To come to the conclusion, US News looked at five separate factors:
- Job Market Index (20 percent of the rankings) - Which took into account the unemployment rate and median salary.
- Value Index (25 percent) - Which was "determined by dividing the blended median annual household income by the blended annual cost of living for each metro area."
Quality of Life Index (30 percent) - Which took into account crime rates, quality of health care, well-being, education and commute time.- Desirability Index (15 percent) - Basically, they surveyed people where they'd actually want to live.
- Net Migration (10 percent) - Factored in how many people are moving in and out of each city.
Here's how Miami fared:
- Job Market - 6.3/10
- Value - 3.4/10
- Quality of Life - 6.8/10
- Desirability - 5.8/10
- Net Migration - 8.2/10
It should come as no surprise that Miami's lowest ranking was in "value." Basically, that means that people are struggling to get by here. It's not exactly news that Miami's increasingly high rents and housing costs have put a lot of housing out of reach for Miamians as average local salaries fail to catch up.
Basically, that's the problem we write about (and everyone in town complains about) basically every single week, and which no local leaders ever actually try to do much about.
In fact, our quality of life ranking (6.8) was just 0.1 below Denver (6.9), which took the title as America's best city to live in. Turns out Denver just is much more affordable and has a much stronger job market.
If it's any consolation, New York City is amongst one of the few metro areas that actually ranked lower than Miami, coming in at 96th. San Juan, Puerto Rico took the very bottom spot.
Sarasota was the Florida city highest on the list, coming in 14th overall.
