Here are the best hiring hotspots for recent graduates—cities in the Midwest and South are even outpacing career hubs like New York City

Graduation season is in full swing, and millions of budding professionals across America are turning their tassels and setting out to land their first full-time gigs. Growing Midwest and Southern cities are outshining hubs like New York and L.A. as the best destinations for new workers. Birmingham-Hoover, Alabama, is the top U.S. metropolitan area for new graduates to find work on the college-level career path, according to a recent study from ADP. The region offers the best opportunity for entry-level professionals, based on annual wages ($59,004) for young workers’ jobs that require “considerable preparation,” hiring rates for talent in their 20s (2.8%), and the area’s affordability. Birmingham dethroned Raleigh, North Carolina, after its two-year run at the top, now ranked fifth, boasting an average annual wage estimate of $56,372 and a hiring rate of 2.8%. Graduates would also have luck settling in Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida, to jump-start their careers. The beachy metropolitan area, which jumped from 26th place up to second this year, is turbocharging hiring at 3.4% and paying its young workers an average of $49,817 a year. And while San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California, may rank poorly in terms of affordability, its sky-high average wage of $70,708 and strong hiring rate of 2.7% crowned it the third-best place for new graduates. Most notably, Midwest and southern metro areas are outranking some of the most buzzy hotspots for college graduates. Columbus, Ohio, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, also made the top 10 thanks to their strong hiring rates above 3% and affordable cost of living. And they even rank higher than glitzy cities; San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, California, and New York-Newark-Jersey City, spanning New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, came in eighth and tenth place, respectively. They might exhibit a strong hiring rate and higher annual wages for young professionals, but when adjusted for affordability, early-career salaries a