10 US cities job seekers are flocking to right now — and 5 cities they’re abandoning to get there

• Job seekers are most likely to apply for jobs in San Francisco, New York, and Washington, DC, according to a new report from Glassdoor.
• And they’re leaving towns like Providence, Rhode Island, and Riverside, California, in droves.
• Certain cities are hubs for growing industries like tech and banking, while others don’t have the same benefit.

When job seekers move to a new area, it’s usually for a specific company – not for the city itself.

But some cities are especially attractive to “metro movers,” or those who apply to jobs outside of the metro area they live in.

That’s according to a new report by Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain.

Especially popular cities were those with high-profile companies - like San Francisco's Facebook, Salesforce, and Lyft - or those with a mélange of industries, like Washington D.C.'s mix of healthcare, government, consulting, and education.

Other cities have residents who are itching to apply and work elsewhere. They tended to be cities that are near booming job hubs, like Providence, San Jose, and Baltimore.

Glassdoor analyzed 668,000 online job applications over one week to understand work-related migration in the US. Almost 30% of these applications were to jobs in a different metro area than the job seeker's present residence.

Below are the 10 cities that attracted the most job applications from outsiders ranked in order of the smallest to largest percentage of applications from job seekers willing to move:

10. Austin

Biggest source city: Dallas

Top company for out-of-town applicants: International Business Machines Corporation

9. Dallas

Percentage of applications from job seekers willing to move: 2.8%

Biggest source city: Houston

Top company for out-of-town applicants: AMR Corporation

8. Seattle

7. Chicago

6. Boston

5. Washington, DC

4. Los Angeles

3. San Jose, California

2. New York

1. San Francisco

Local job seekers in five cities are overwhelmingly applying to jobs elsewhere

About 28.5% of job applications overall are to jobs outside of the applicant's metro area, Glassdoor said.

Most applicants who aimed to leave opted for booming hubs near their cities.

Other cities are also home to noted institutions of higher education, and graduates often opt to work somewhere outside of where they studied.

Brown University, Providence College, and the Rhode Island School of Design are all in Providence, Rhode Island, which scored top on the list of cities with the most metro movers.

Here are the five cities job seekers are leaving the most:

5. Sacramento, California

Percentage of applications to other cities: 44.4%

Where they're going: San Francisco; San Jose, California; Los Angeles

4. Baltimore

Percentage of applications to other cities:45.6%

Where they're going: Washington, DC; New York City; Philadelphia

3. Riverside, California

Percentage of applications to other cities:45.6%

Where they're going: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco

2. San Jose, California

Percentage of applications to other cities:47.6%

Where they're going: San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York

1. Providence, Rhode Island

Percentage of applications to other cities:52.2%

Where they're going: Boston; New York; Worcester, Massachusetts