Do renters move to Philadelphia for jobs or for the location?

When people pick up and move to a new city, it's usually for one of two reasons: either they are looking for a change of location or they have found a new job. For the purposes of a new report, Apartment List refers to these groups as job-first movers and location-first movers. So which is more pervasive in Philadelphia?

The apartment listing site surveyed more than 20,000 users to get a sense of their motivations for long-distance moves. Nationally, 46.5 percent of people who moved to a new city reported doing so for job purposes. This was most often true among college-educated renters and was especially true in tech hubs where newly minted grads were likely to head for their first jobs.

The trends are somewhat reversed locally. In Philadelphia, 46.3 percent of renters reported moving here before finding a job, making them location-first movers. Of that population, 29.3 percent reported that they planned to settle in the city long term.

That ratio doesn't lend itself to favorable national comparisons, though. In other cities — ones that are slightly less expensive for renters — 42.4 percent report their long-term plans to stay in the city to which they moved. In more expensive metro areas, that number is 34.3 percent.