America's Leading Creative Class Cities in 2015

When I wrote Rise of the Creative Class, I rated and ranked America’s metro areas on the share of the workforce that does creative class work. The creative class is made up of more than 40 million workers—a third of the U.S. workforce—and its ranks are composed of high-paid knowledge workers in fields like science and tech; arts, culture, media and entertainment; business and management; and healthcare and education. Now, with help from my Martin Prosperity Institute team, I’m taking a closer look at the creative class populations in U.S. cities, not just metros, using Census data.

The creative class makes up roughly 40 to 45 percent of the population in leading metros like Silicon Valley’s San Jose, Washington, D.C., and Boston, and in college towns and metros like Durham, Ithaca, and Boulder. But the creative class makes up more than 60 to 75 percent of the workforce in leading cities. Indeed, the creative class makes up an average of 42 percent of the workforce in the top quarter of U.S. cities.