Boston, MA
This historic haven is also a haven for jobs, with the unemployment rate at a cool 4.8 percent in the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy area and just 5 percent in the city proper. With Harvard, one of the nation’s top universities, employing about 18,000 people in the area, it’s no surprise, but there are plenty of businesses booming from technology, like iRobot, a robotics company most famous for Roomba, to the environment — Clean Harbors, Inc. was ranked by the Boston Globe as a top company — it was instrumental in containing the BP oil spill. The area added over 50,000 jobs in 2011, and the passage of a new casino bill promises to bring even more jobs to the area.
