(gentle music)
- [Briggs] What is going on, everyone?
Welcome back to part two of the Middle Class series.
If you didn't see the first part, there's a link down below
and it's a video about cities
the middle class has been priced out of.
Today we're looking at cities in the United States that,
for middle class, you know?
You turn a wrench, swing a hammer, answer phones,
you can still here comfortably.
As we've all seen in the last couple decades,
the middle class is shrinking and not all are getting rich
and moving on up like George Jefferson.
We're gonna look at the average home value
according to a couple of different real estate websites,
the livability score and the annual average cost of living,
excluding housing costs,
and this is according to the Consumer Expenditure Survey
from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
Everyone wants to know sometimes where I got my numbers.
That's where it is.
All right, let's see where the middle class
can still thrive.
(exciting music)
Number 10, Laredo, Texas.
I'll give you the heads up now,
there's a lot of Texas on this video.
But Laredo, Texas is a South Texas city
of almost 260,000 residents on the banks of the Rio Grande,
and the Mexico border, obviously.
About 2,000 jobs in Laredo
have to do with the Border Patrol,
but their biggest employers here
are a couple of different school districts.
I haven't been to Laredo in years,
but when I went there and I visited, I enjoyed it.
They had great food, great people.
Is it the greatest city in Texas?
No, but it's a decent place to live.
It's affordable and it's safe.
Most people have this illusion
that if it's on the border with Mexico
it's just gonna be this horrible place to live.
No, take a look at some of the places like Brownsville,
El Paso, Laredo, their crime rates are not high.
Matter of fact, the crime rate in Laredo
is 16% lower than the national average.
The average home value here is 165,000,
their livability score is 74
and the annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is about 18,000 a year.
Now, that one varies, whoever,
but that's what you can get by on,
18,000 a year, not counting housing.
(exciting music)
Number nine, Tyler, Texas.
Tyler, Texas is about the midway point
between Dallas and the Louisiana border.
Tyler is in East Texas,
which is sort of known as the beginning of the South.
It's just the beginning, so they have dentists.
Tyler is a city of little over 106,000 residents
and their largest employers
are a couple healthcare companies.
Actress Sandy Duncan was raised here.
She was born down the road in Henderson,
but raised in Tyler.
One YouTuber living in Tyler
said people here are polite, not friendly,
and then she said there's a difference.
She did a top 10 reasons to live in Tyler,
I'll leave a link down below.
It's pretty entertaining.
Her channel's called Channel Dani, D-A-N-I.
Anyway, the average home value here is 184,000,
the livability score in Tyler, Texas is 76,
and the annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is about $18,000.
(exciting music)
Number eight, Norman, Oklahoma.
Norman is a suburb of Oklahoma City,
it's just south of downtown.
Norman has about 125,000 residents
and it's a really nice place to live.
It has a little bit of crime,
it's only like 15% higher than the national average.
Everything else is good or great.
Their schools, on average, get very high marks.
And stop typing, I'm sure at least one of the schools suck,
I get that all the time.
I give stats or grades on a school district
and someone needs to tell me I'm wrong
because the school they went to sucked.
We're talking averages.
The largest employer here is The University of Oklahoma,
then Norman Regional Hospital and Norman Public Schools.
Oklahoma in general is just a great place
for the middle class to live.
It's kind of a thing now.
The average home value in Norman is 191,000,
their livability score is 84, which is pretty good,
their annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is about $20,000 a year.
It's a little more expensive
than some of the other ones we have on this list,
but their livability score's really good.
(exciting music)
Number seven, Freemont, Nebraska.
Freemont is a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska
and it has about 26,000 residents.
It also sits on the Platte River,
so that gives you something to do if you move there.
This is a great place for middle class remote workers.
The cost of living here is low and so are the home prices.
It's also the nation's largest producer of SPAM.
That's right, SPAM.
A bunch of Hawaiians just started looking for homes
in Freemont, Nebraska.
Hormel, the producer of SPAM,
is the largest employer in Freemont.
They got about 1,500 locals working there.
Now, that was pre-pandemic.
If that changed since then,
I know people have been laid off
and everything else like that,
but that's pre-pandemic numbers.
They don't have much crime in Freemont either.
The total crime rate is 3% lower than the national average.
Their violent crime rate
is actually 61% lower than the national average.
The average home value in Freemont is $196,000,
the livability score is 79,
and the annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is about $16,000.
(exciting music)
Number six, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Iowa's starting to pick up popularity as a place
for millennials and the middle class to move.
Des Moines is, I wouldn't say start blowing up,
but a lot of people are heading that way.
Davenport and Cedar Rapids
seem to be next on the migration list.
Cedar Rapids has about 133,000 residents.
That's living in the city.
The entire metro area has about 257,000.
Cedar Rapids has some tech and aerospace companies
that a lot of people work at.
Their biggest one is Collins Aerospace.
That has almost 10,000 employees.
After that, you got some hospitals
that employ a bunch of people.
I like Cedar Rapids, they got a nice downtown.
It's a really good looking place.
Nice mixture of old, restored buildings and newer buildings.
Pretty neat place.
It's got the Cedar River running right through town.
The average home value in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is 168,000,
the livability score is 78,
and the annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is about 18,000.
(exciting music)
Number five, Des Moines, Iowa.
Staying in Iowa, we have Des Moines.
A lot of people think Des Moines is the capital of Iowa.
I find that really strange.
I mean, it is the capital of Iowa,
but that seems to be all that people know about this state.
Unless they're from Iowa or one of the nearby states,
nobody seems to know anything about this place.
One thing people are starting to learn about Des Moines
is it's a nice place to live.
They do have some crime,
they have a few bad neighborhoods
that have really raised the crime rate for the whole city,
which is unfortunate,
but they have a low cost of living and housing,
most of the schools are really good
and they have a ton of office jobs.
Wells Fargo's here.
Mercy Medical, UnityPoint Health,
Principal Financial Group, they've got a lotta offices
and a lot of big companies waiting to hire you
if you move here.
The average home value is 166,000,
the livability score is 77,
and the annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is $18,000.
(exciting music)
Number four, Akron, Ohio.
Here's a city we have,
I don't think we've ever really talked about Akron
on this channel.
I mean, it's not nice enough to be on a nice list
and it's not bad enough to be on a really bad list,
it's just sort of in the middle there.
That is until you get to a video
where it's about the middle class, I guess.
So upfront, Akron has some crime.
But like I said in the last video,
if they're like 50% above the national average in crime,
it's still pretty decent place to live
when you look at places like Detroit with, like,
460-something percent above the national average.
Or Chicago has some places like that too.
Akron is 51% higher than the national average,
so it's got some crime.
But here's what's amazing about Akron.
If you work remotely,
this could be a dream for you if you wanna buy a home.
You could buy two homes, probably.
They have homes all over the place that are about $140,000.
The catch about those houses, they're really nice.
If you want one that's not so nice
and you're probably gonna have to put some work into it,
you're looking in between 50 and $75,000.
I'm not even kidding.
You could make that house payment
working at, like, Taco Bell, I'm sure.
Your house payment would be,
like, right around $150 a month.
$150 a month.
You know, with taxes and everything else,
you're probably looking at 165 a month.
But let me be clear, Akron isn't the best city to live in.
But if you're coming from some place like Southside Chicago,
Detroit, East St. Louis,
you'll look at Akron and go, "This place isn't that bad."
The average home value in Akron, Ohio is $89,000,
the livability score here is 66, kinda low,
and the annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is $14,000 a year.
And if you are one of the people
looking for a house under $100,000,
there is plenty to choose from.
You can actually be picky.
(exciting music)
Number three, Abileen, Texas.
Yep, back to Texas we go. Abilene.
Abilene is west of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro Area,
kind of on your way to El Paso.
Abilene's kind of a weird place.
It's sort of a military town, it's sort of a college town,
it's got a prison not too far out of town.
You have Dyess Air Force Base on the west side of town
and on the east side of town,
you got Abilene Christian University.
These are a few of the largest employers
in the Abilene area.
Actually, Dyess Air Force Base has 8,400 employees.
Abilene Christian has almost 2,000
and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
has a little over 1,000.
You have some healthcare employers here,
like Hendrick Health System,
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas,
and of course Abilene Regional Medical Center.
So this is a great place if you're in the healthcare field.
Abilene has a little crime, not terrible.
It's only 16% above the national average.
And their cost of living is actually 16% lower
than the national average.
Their housing is 45% lower than the national average.
Those are some good numbers.
The average home value in Abilene is $155,000,
the livability score here is 80, so that's pretty darn good,
the annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is about $18,000 a year.
(exciting music)
Number two, Brownsville, Texas.
Down in the southern-most point of Texas,
you have Brownsville on the Rio Grande
and not too far from the Gulf of Mexico.
If you follow Elon Musk, Tesla, and all that SpaceX stuff,
you know he's been throwing a lot of money
around Brownsville to help his different ventures.
He has a rocket assembly plant there or something right now
and they've been launching rockets from that area.
I think one exploded.
In the years to come,
I think he's gonna be bringing a lot more jobs there.
Right now, the main employer
is the Brownsville Independent School District.
They have almost 8,000 employees.
Then you have a bunch of other ones
like University of Texas Rio Grande Valley,
City of Brownsville, things like that.
Brownsville's crime is only 16% higher
than the national average, which is pretty good.
And their housing costs are actually 55% lower.
The cost of living's 27% below the national average.
Brownsville's not a small city either,
they've got 175,000 people actually living in the city
with about 420,000 living in the metro area.
The average home value in Brownsville, Texas is 126,000,
the livability score here is 76,
and the annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is about $16,000 a year.
All right, before we get to number one,
don't forget we have another channel called On This Day.
There is a link down below.
Love it if you went over there and subscribed.
If you haven't subscribed to this channel, please do so
and ring that little bell so you know when we uploaded.
All right, on to number one.
(exciting music)
And number one, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
I love Fort Wayne, Indiana.
This is a great place.
Indiana's got a lot of problems.
I mean, Indianapolis isn't the best,
Gary, Indiana blows,
South Bend isn't great,
then you have Fort Wayne.
Fort Wayne is a great place to live.
Right now, it is ranked in number one
as the best big city in Indiana,
the best big city in crime,
meaning they have the best stats,
best big city in education, and employment.
They're number one in all four of those,
which are all very important
to anyone looking for a new place to live.
Their crime rate's only 20% higher
than the national average,
but their cost of living is 14% lower
than the national average.
Their housing is 44% lower than the national average
and their schools get a grade of B+.
Fort Wayne has a little over 260,000 residents
with the metro area having almost 420,000.
Some of the bigger companies here are Franklin Electric,
Frontier Communications, Indiana Michigan Power,
Med Pro Group, North American Van Lines, Lincoln Financial,
and Steel Dynamics is headquartered in Fort Wayne.
The average home value in Fort Wayne, Indiana is 170,000,
livability score is 81,
and the annual cost of living, excluding housing,
is about $17,000 a year.
All right, that's today's video,
hope you guys enjoyed it,
hope you got some information out of it.
Now go out, have a good day, and be nice to each other.