The District of Columbia was named the country’s best big city for recent college graduates, based on the job market and cost of living, in a recent list compiled by Richard Florida, a business professor at the University of Toronto and author of “Who’s Your City: How the Places We Pick Shape the Lives We Lead.”

On top of that, a survey of recent graduates by CareerCast.com, a job search company, found that D.C. was second only to New York City among the most desirable locations, beating Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco.

“(The area is) still adding jobs in [service-providing industries], and in health care and in the federal sector,” Stephen Fuller, an economist with George Mason University, said in an article by the Washington Examiner. “And the jobs we’re losing in the region (such as construction and retail sales) tend not to be college graduate-type jobs.”

Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an outplacement firm based in Chicago, found that unemployment among 20 to 24-year-olds nationwide increased to 13.9 percent during March, up from 9.2 percent last year. Unemployment among 25 to 29-year-olds came in at 11 percent during January, the highest rate since 1983.

During March, the District saw its unemployment rate decrease from 9.9 percent to 9.8 percent, which is still higher than the national unemployment rate at the time of 8.5 percent. The District had a total non-farm employment of 705,000 workers during March, according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is down from 706,600 workers during February, but a .8 percent increase from last year.